


Is She Really Going Out With Him?

by Nell65



Series: Big World [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-09-22 02:27:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 66,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9578414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65/pseuds/Nell65
Summary: Raven wasn’t sorry. Not exactly. And she didn’t have any decisions she regretted. Each step had led logically to the next. Deeper and deeper and deeper into the political morass that was the grounder coaltion. All because she thought she could have a light, casual affair with a King.A sequel of sorts, or a spin-off  fromOur (Dirty) Little Secret.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is canon compliant only up through 4.02. I hated that they didn't even get their six months, so I gave it back to them. And I hated that canon had Clarke, et al lying to Roan after depending on him to save their bacon, and keeping the radiation a secret from everyone while they looked for the perfect cure/solution instead of getting everyone involved and doing everything they could with what they had. It couldn't possibly have worked out any worse than what did happen. So I changed that too.

“Ouch!" Raven twisted her head to glare up over her shoulder at Roan. "What are you doing?”

She’d been resting on her belly near the center of his large bed, her head pillowed on her arms. He was lying on his side next to her, propped up on his elbow. The blankets were slipping down to his hips, offering her a close view of his very excellent chest just centimeters from her nose. Which was only distracting until she felt the next sting of pain.

He was digging hard into the scars on her lower back with his free hand.

She’d told him her hip and lower back had been especially stiff and sore all day long, asked him to do that thing with his thumbs he’d done once before that had helped relieve the pressure.

He’d cheerfully agreed. Dropping his clothes and kicking them aside before he crawled in next to her, the ancient tech manuals she’d been reviewing since she’d retreated to bed earlier in the evening slipping down to the floor as the mattress shifted under his weight.

But whatever he was doing now was not what he’d done before, and it hurt.

“Your backside is a mess,” he informed her. Both his tone and his frown were full of faintly indignant disapproval. “The scarring’s been allowed to spread a lot further than it ought.”

This criticism of Abby’s care was so wildly unexpected that Raven wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him correctly, much less been able to process it for meaning. “What?”

“Your skin – it’s all...” he pushed the bedding further down her hips, out of his way, and then pressed into the bare flesh along her lower spine, prodding at it in small quick jabs with his big strong fingers.

She winced and grunted softly at the sharp prickling pain.

He continued on, seemingly oblivious to her discomfort. “It’s all stuck through the skin layers to the muscle fibers beneath. When it healed, the scar tissue bound up your skin, the muscle sheath, and the muscles into one solid knot. Each layer ought to move independently. Like this,” he drew his hand up to her shoulder, and pressed gently at her flesh there, massaging in slow small circles.

After a moment, Raven realized she could feel what he meant. Her skin shifted smoothly over her muscles and bones, and without the slightest pain. It was very soothing.

“That’s part of why you’re so stiff and walking hurts,” he added, drawing his fingers back down to her lower back and jabbing in again. Painfully. “It can be pulled free again. It will hurt, but should improve over time.”

She could only stare up at him in wonder, grunting through gritted teeth as he continued to work at ripping her skin free from the muscles of her lower back, uprooting the healing tissue fibers that had grown too deep. “How do you know anything about this?” she gasped, when she could.

He raised his brow at her. “I come from a long line of people who scar themselves on purpose. Taking care that we heal without any limited mobility is just good sense.”

Raven grimaced. His body was a network of scars. A few were accidental, but most were intentionally inflicted, with knives and hot metal. She’d traced them often enough, fingers, lips, and tongue. But she’d barely wasted even half-a-second’s thought about how they were produced, and none at all about how they healed afterward.

Still working at her skin under his fingers, Roan asked, “Don’t you have…,” he frowned, then continued, “I don’t know the English words for this. Um, body workers?”

Raven snorted in surprise. No one on the Ark would ever use such a phrase unless they were making a sly, and faintly weird, reference to sex for barter.

He raised his brow at her derision. “No? Not the right words?”

“No. Not the right words,” she said, her chuckle fading into another grunt as he moved on to another section of skin.

He frowned again, and then said the word in Trigedasleng. “I have no idea how to translate that,” he added.

“Um,” Raven thought for a moment, playing the word back through her head. “Chiropractor? Massage therapist? Athletic trainer? All of them sort of smushed together?” she offered.

“Some of those might work, yes.” He looked curiously at her. “I thought you said you didn’t know any Trigedasleng?”

“I don’t! I’ve just picked up a few words. Understand them. Here and there.”

“Obscure words for a specific type of after-injury healing care?” The furrows between his brows were growing more pronounced.

“I must have heard it sometime,” she said reasonably. “I knew what it meant, right?”

“How many Trigedasleng words do you know, if you know that one?” he countered, sounding ever so mildly accusing – at least to Raven’s suddenly defensive ears.

“I don’t know! I haven’t made lists or totaled the columns!” She really hadn’t been holding out on him, but she felt a stab of vague guilt all the same.

“Tell me what these mean,” he said, and then started rattling off words in the short, slurred gutturals of Trigedasleng.

He began with easy ones. _Bed, table, chair, blanket, fur_ , but by the time he’d made it to words like _occasionally, rarely, profound, sacred, ritual, constellation, milky way, aurora borealis, diaphanous curtains of light_ , and _phases of the moon_ , Raven felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck and along her arms. A combination of panic and certainty giving rise to nothing but angry dread as the corresponding English words fell automatically from her lips.

She should not know those words.

“Stop!” she exclaimed quietly. “Okay! I know a lot of words.”

“Do you understand these?” he asked, and then he unleashed another barrage of Trigedasleng.

Phrases this time. Phrases like: _lift with your legs, haul water, run toward danger, walk carefully, ride hard, throw far, hone a blade, thrust a knife, fight to win, parley patiently, negotiate skillfully, persuade your leaders, threaten enemies, bluff when you can_ , and on and on and on.

Raven translated them all, until she couldn’t stand it any longer. She scooted away, turning her back fully to him by rolling onto her side. “I asked you to stop,” she muttered.

After a moment, he ran his hand gently up her spine, sweeping her hair back across her shoulder and off of her face, pressing closer to say quietly, “You have beautiful hair, soft and fine as rain water.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling faintly into the pillow under her cheek, always mollified by true praise even when she knew it was said just to jolly her back into a better mood.

“And a great ass,” he added, bumping it gently with his thigh.

“Yes. I know! Thanks!” She was smirking now, but still refusing to turn back to look at him.

“I killed a famous Trikru warrior in battle when I was sixteen,” he said, settling in close enough behind her to spoon their bodies, wrapping his arm around her waist to pull her snugly against him.

His low voice was thoughtful, and his fingers gentle as he ran them along her shoulder and her arm, into the dip of her waist and up along the swell of her hip and back again, tracing the curve of her body long soothing strokes. “I remember his face. The way his tattoos marked him, emphasizing his brow and his chin. How startled he was when my blade went through his chest. Offended even, to be bested by a youth. The curved lines on my left shoulder were awarded to me for that kill. Set into my skin in the great hall during the winter festival. It felt very significant at the time. Now it hardly seems to matter at all.”

He fell silent then, continuing to stroke gently along her skin, paying back the earlier pain with soft caresses. But after a few minutes, he asked, “What do you remember from your first significant kill?”

She rocked into him, chasing the warmth of his body against her back, and caught his wrist to pull his arm more closely around her. “I was eighteen and I blew up a bridge, so I didn’t really see people die – only saw their bodies later.” She twisted her neck to look up over her shoulder at him. “Why are you telling me this?”

“To see how much you understand. I’ve been speaking in Trigedasleng,” he said. In Trigedasleng.

“I…,” she cast her mind back and realized to her intense horror that he was telling the truth. The remnants of her last meal crawled up her throat. She swallowed back the acid bile. “Okay. I truly did not know I could do that.”

“How could you not know?” He sounded baffled. And disbelieving. At least he’d fallen back into English.

“I didn’t know! I never tried to learn and I don’t spend much time around grounders.”

His eyes opened wide with surprise and his lips curved down.

She realized she might have hit ‘grounders’ with unnecessarily heavy disdain.

She wiggled around to face him fully and caught her fingers against his beard, running her thumb up along the high arch of his cheekbone and down the ritual scar that curved sharply below it. She smile-grimaced self-consciously and noted, “You’re still the exception.”

“Have you always been able to do this? Understand us? Since you came to the ground?” he asked, catching her fingers with his free hand and trapping them against his chest.

“No.” Her voice was fainter than she wished. She pulled her hand free. “Not then.”

He examined her face carefully for a long moment. Then he asked, “When did it begin?”

She could tell from his eyes that he’d already come up with a theory. The same theory she’d already mostly confirmed for herself.

“When I took the chip. From when ALIE was in my head." Seeing him nodding faintly in agreement, she went on to explain, "When I was in the City of Light, I could understand everyone there, whatever languages they were speaking. The languages just got…. left behind, I guess, when Clarke and the rest managed to force me out. I still can’t speak any.” That she knew of. And she sure as hell wasn’t trying tonight. “But I guess I still understand everything.”

She hated even thinking about what ALIE had left behind, no matter how useful the knowledge was turning out to be as they fought to hold off the apocalypse. One more time. Made her feel part cyborg, but not in a good, cool, useful way, like a bionic arm or leg or a new steel spine. In a way that left her wondering if her mind was entirely her own, if she was still really herself, still fully present and in control.

“Who else knows this?” he asked her, clearly far more interested in the _what_ than the _why_ or the _how_ , or any philosophical implications of either.

“Um. Only you. It hasn’t come up, really?”

His eyes had narrowed, and he was watching her carefully. Cautiously. Speculatively.

“Why are you asking?” she demanded.

“You’re sure? You didn’t mention it to Monty or Wick or Dr. Griffin? Or Kane or Bellamy? Or Clarke?” his voice was slow and steady now. Cautious, even.

“No!” She repeated. More adamantly this time. “Until **very** recently,” she awarded him a meaningful eyebrow raise, dropped her gaze down along his chest and then dragged it back up to meet his eyes, “I avoided grounders. So much I truly didn’t realize until just tonight how well I understand.”

She shrugged helplessly at that, still coming to terms with this strange new skill. Knowledge. Capability. Translation software left behind in her brainpan by a psychotic bitch of an AI.

“Anyway,” she added with a quick scowl, “I have too much really important shit to do to waste my time sitting around trying to figure out if I’ve accidentally learned a whole other language I didn’t care about in the first place! I’m a really fucking busy person.”

His expression had shifted into an interesting mix of calculating and menacing. She felt mostly sure it wasn’t directed at her, despite her bad attitude about grounders in general, or her disinclination to learn his mother tongue.

However irrelevant her personal opinion on that had turned out to be.

Which, she realized with her next blink, led directly to only one real end. “You’re going to ask me to spy on some grounders, aren’t you?”

He pretended to be taken aback. “No! Not spy! Just…. be in position to overhear a conversation or two. Maybe three.”

She made a face at him. “Spy.”

He shrugged, a small guilty twist on his lips, faint laughter in his eyes when he looked directly at her. “Yes. Spy.”

“Why would I do that?” she asked.

He opened his light eyes very wide and offered her a particularly innocent expression, fluttering his dark eyelashes as he curled his lips upward against his beard. It was a mockery of flirtation. It made him look more like a predator than ever.

“Because you like my pretty face?” he said.

She raised her brow, shaking her head at him. He was without a doubt the vainest man she’d ever been involved with, and sometimes it was less charming than others. Like now, for instance. “Try again.”

His expression turned more than a little crafty and smug, and the glint in his eyes was knowing. “Because you like using knowledge no one else has. Or knows you have.”

Raven decided, after a split second’s worth of shock, that he did not deserve the dignity of a direct response to that remark. She sniffed dismissively and then said, “And if I did do you this favor, what would I get out of it?”

“Furs?” he offered.

His current room might be larger than most, but part of the reason it was even available for guest quarters was its location in the northeast corner of the most damaged ‘whole’ section of the ring. It lay in shadow under the hill most of the day, and at night clammy drafts curled in along the metal floors and flowed through no longer airtight doorways. Found their way between thin blankets and into suddenly icy sheets.

It was nothing like her own teeny-tiny quarters, nestled next to the engine rooms and always warm as a result.

The first time she’d joined him here, five nights ago, the cold had seeped deep into her bones, leaving a dull ache that had made it impossible for her to sleep. He’d ended up wrapping her snugly in his big coat with the heavy fur collar. On top of the several layers of clothes she already had on. And then he'd given her a hat.

The next day several furs had appeared on his bed. And more the day after that, and the day after that. Each fur nicer than the last, until she’d settled on a half dozen of the thickest and the softest pelt blankets she’d ever seen or touched, all of them backed with deer suede so fine the only word she knew to describe it was _silky_. Until she had enough of them to be not merely willing, but able to lay naked beside him, her skin almost glowing from their shared heat.

She’d slept better here, in the last few days, than she’d slept in more than a year. Since before her whole life had spun off its axis and then crashed hard into a dying planet. A damp, freezing, acid-bathed planet already occupied by people so violently and viciously uncompromising that Marcus freaking Kane had ended up standing on the side of the angels.

“You’ve already given me so many furs there are furs on the floor!” she exclaimed.

Protecting her bare feet from the chill when she heaved herself out of bed in the mornings.

“Orgasms,” he said, good humor glinting in his eyes. He thought he was going to get what he wanted. He was just playing with her.

She batted her own eyes at him, trailing her fingers down the line of his chest to slip her hand around his soft cock. Squeezing very gently, she reminded him, “I already get those.”

“True,” he shifted his hips closer to her, his cock already swelling against her palm. “But I’d definitely be inspired to do my best work.”

The full force of his most charmingly suggestive grin at close range was kind of a lot. She pulled her hand away and said, “You’re such a dick.”

“I do have a big dick, which you like very much.” He settled his own hand onto her hip and shook her very gently, his tone turning wheedling, his eyes locked on her face. “It would help me a great deal.”

Raven scowled, but at the same time had an overwhelming sense that – lying warm and cared for in his bed, in his arms – she ought to give him a hearing at least. And what loyalty did she owe any other grounders, after all?

She said, “I’m listening.”

He nodded. When he spoke again he was nothing but earnest. “I was out of Azgeda for a long time. Not everyone is pleased to have me home, to have me on the throne in place of my mother, or some other person they would prefer. Different factions have emerged. Some want me to be more aggressive, others want peace. Some counseled to use the chaos to unseat the commanders forever. Others to replace her as quickly as possible to make sure that the sky people don’t upset the old ways. Others are furious that Azgeda has already lost what little we gained with Ontari. And none of them are happy with all the choices I’ve made, or to have me listening to the sky people and their stories of a new cataclysm, not after I lost our own nightblood commander to them.”

“That was ALIE!”

“They don’t care. It’s all the same to them. Because of my association with Wanheda, with Arkadia, I’m telling them things they don’t want to hear about the devastation they want to imagine is nothing but a story designed to frighten them into handing over territory or power. There are those among my people who think the very best way to vanquish the threat looming over Azgeda is to eliminate me, and then any tie to your people.”

Raven’s heart pinched tight, unwelcome visions of more human devastation, of thousands upon thousands of Azgedans, men, women, children, all of them dying painfully, cursing the Ark with every fading breath, welling up in her imagination.

“That wouldn’t stop the meltdowns!” she declared indignantly.

His expression was rueful. “To be the one on the throne when the world ends is not an enviable position, I assure you. But better to be there than to be dead. And I can help save more people as long as I’m still the king. If you could help me confirm the identify of the plotters among my party,” his expression hardened, his warm eyes turned cold, “I can eliminate the threat quickly and quietly before I return home.”

Raven told herself she was considering all the options. All the angles. That she hadn’t known in her heart she was going to do it even before he explained. “Fine,” she said, after a suitably thoughtful pause. “But, if I think what I learn affects Arkadia, I’ll tell Kane.”

She should probably tell Kane either way, she knew. But that risked him ordering her not to help Roan, and then she’d have to disobey him. Better to do it first and apologize later, she reasoned. A lesson she’d learned from Finn, what felt like (but really wasn’t) a long time ago.

“Of course.” His nod was startlingly regal, especially for a naked man lying on his side in a tumbled bed. “Just, please, tell me first.”

“I can do that.”

He smiled very sweetly. “Thank you.”

His kiss on her brow was gentle. “Now roll over,” he said, pushing at her shoulder.

“Why?” she asked, even as she let herself be directed by his hands.

“Because your back still needs work. This will hurt, but it should help loosen up your moving later.”

It did. And it did. And in the middle was another of the promised orgasms. And then Raven slept well throughout what remained of the night, buried in her heap of furs, warmed from the inside out from the knowledge that Roan, King of Azgeda, wanted, needed, **_asked for_** her help with a problem of his own.

~~~~

Morning found Raven rummaging with increasing impatience through the boxes of various bits and pieces of electronic parts, stashed for safekeeping in the corners and under tables in her workshop.

“Yes!” she cried at last, snatching up the tiny circuit. She’d found the final piece she needed, one she’d been sure she’d seen once before and now she finally had it in her hands.

As soon as she had the parts and the tools all laid out, assembling the directional microphone was a snap. It was small enough to rest almost unseen attached to her laptop computer. Now she was ready to begin her career as a spy, as an international agent of intrigue – as the tag line of some movie or game she couldn’t remember but wouldn’t stop playing in her head kept reminding her.

She settled into the canteen a few minutes later, and was smugly thrilled when her microphone worked exactly as she’d hoped, allowing her to listen in via her headphones to a conversation between two of Roan’s suspects taking place almost three meters away on the other side of the seating area.

Roan had identified three people, two men and a woman, members of his now ironically named ‘honor guard’, in whom he was particularly interested. While Raven focused her attention on them, Roan would continue on as he had been. He was spending his morning with Kane and the council, and then in the afternoon driving out with Kane to visit an outlying village to meet with their heda, attempting to persuade them to consider falling in with Arkadia to ride out the coming radiation wave.

This left the rest of his guard, including the ones he was most interested in, to spend their days lounging about, as they had most days since arriving. They sat by the community fire-pit, or the outside canteen, or at the bar. Which served mild stimulants, not liquor, during the day. There they entertained themselves by making the shattered remnants of the Ark population nervous and/or pissed off by laughing ominously or looming silently. Or ostentatiously napping in public spaces while everyone else ran around trying to do the work of a crew of two thousand with less than a few hundred hands on deck. There was a lot of that, too.

Right now, though, they were complaining to each other about the food.

“Hey, Raven.”

Raven looked up to see Kyle Wick looming over her.

She was not pleased to be interrupted under the best of times. This was not the best of times. She tried communicating this via a glare.

Kyle pulled out a chair and plopped down.

“Whatcha doin’ out here?” he drawled, his sharp eyes very much at odds with his lazy voice.

Then his glance fell on her directional microphone.

“Raven?”

She pulled out her ear buds in disgust. “What?

She watched his eyes follow the line of the microphone, land on the two Azgedans.

“Are you recording them?” he demanded in an outraged whisper.

“No!” Only because she hadn’t thought of that. She made a mental note.

Wick rocked forward, leaning over his elbows to hiss, “Has he got you so wrapped around his fingers, you’re **_spying_** for him now?”

Raven was shocked by the bitter anger and contempt in his voice, and infuriated by it, too, an unexpected flash of rage shooting through her skull.

“That is the one of the most insulting things you have ever said to me,” she hissed right back.

An awkward silence fell.

Finally succumbing to his well-earned embarrassment, Wick muttered, “I’m sorry.”

Raven was still seething, but she offered him a curt nod of acknowledgment.

“Why him, Raven?”

She heard the unspoken, ‘and why not me?’ hovering in his plaintive tone.

“You have no right to ask me that question,” she snapped.

He shifted forward again, just as he shifted his approach. “You hate grounders!” he declared.

She nodded. “Most of them.”

That silenced him. For about two seconds. “So you’re gonna tell me he’s different then?”

Since Roan was, that’s exactly what she decided she’d do. “His mother had him educated to be a king. Private tutors since he was a tiny kid, special trainers, the whole ball of wax. He’s read a bunch of the same American and British classics we have. He did equivalents of all the standard STEM stuff – basic physics, biology, and chemistry up through what might be middle school levels. In math, he made it to calculus before he tapped out. Mostly, of course, he’s read lots and lots of history and political theory. And then he used all that pretty education to challenge his mother over the commander and the coalition. Ended up out on his ass in the wilderness cutting bad deals with Lexa. So yeah. He is really different from your average grounder.”

Wick dropped his eyes, his expression unsatisfied. So Raven went ahead and answered his other, unspoken, question as well. “When Roan looks at me, he doesn’t see what I was. He doesn’t know the girl who walked in space, so he doesn’t see me as broken. Damaged. Weak. Less. Or as ALIE’s willing victim, just waiting for the next big bad to twist me up. He only sees me as I am now.” She raised her chin proudly, “And he thinks I’m awesome.”

“I…” Wick started to bluster.

Raven cut him off. “So I feel that way, when I’m with him. Whole. Complete. Myself again.”

Wick’s mouth was still hanging open.

“It’s not about you, Kyle. We were long over. It’s about me. I needed this. I didn’t know just how much.”

After carefully searching her face, Kyle sighed and slumped back into his chair. “Okay. But the spying…?”

“He’s worried about his own people. Worried about the possibility of resistance because he’s too close to Arkadia. Just wants to know a little more.”

“So you **are** recording them for him.”

“Yes.”

“His people.”

“Yep.”

“You should tell Kane.”

“If anything turns up, I will.”

~~~~

Clarke let out a huge sigh of relief as Kane finally adjourned the morning’s meeting, arching back as far as she could in her chair, raising her arms behind her head to roll and shake the kinks out of her shoulders and her neck.

As she returned to her normal upright sitting position, she caught Roan’s eye.

He’d been sitting opposite her at the small conference table for nearly a week now, the better for her to watch his attention flag and irritation set in every time he felt the conversation was wandering off topic. Which was pretty much every time the council got sidetracked into a debate about the science.

At first she, and everyone else, had assumed Roan’s irritation was because he didn’t understand any of it. Then they realized, after he neatly summed up a long digression about data collection, that even if he couldn’t follow the math, he could follow the implications clearly enough. Which, unfortunately, did nothing to actually stop future digressions. It only encouraged them.

How she longed, sometimes, for the days when she could just put her head together with Bellamy, they’d have a quick conference, and ninety percent of the time, she’d be able to announce their course of action in about ten minutes and get everyone moving in the new direction. She also felt sure Roan would have approved wholeheartedly of this method, substituting in himself, of course, as one of the decision makers.

At this particular moment however, the glint in Roan’s eye wasn’t irritation. It was sardonic amusement.

Once he knew she’d seen him, he flicked his gaze towards Bellamy, sitting down at the far end of the table, and then back to her, his smirk growing wider as his amusement level ratcheted up.

Clarke risked a quick glance at Bellamy, and realized that he was looking at her with his lips faintly parted. Looking, more precisely, at her tits.

Clarke wrenched her eyes back to Roan, feeling her cheeks heat with a blush. She should never have stretched like that, not in such a place. It had been thoughtless in the extreme.

Roan winked at her, the fucking self-satisfied bastard. So she tried to telepathically choke him out.

This worked no better than it ever had, and then he was pushing back his chair to rise with Kane, the two of them stepping aside to confer as the last of the councilors straggled towards the doorway. Probably putting their heads together about the village they were hoping to visit that afternoon.

Clarke stood as well, grateful to be out of her chair at least for a little while, and waited for Bellamy to join her as she headed out for lunch, as he always did. He seemed blessedly unaware that his momentary lapse of control had been a source of humor for Roan. Or embarrassment for her.

She was NOT embarrassed that Bellamy had been watching her stretch. At this point, she’d have been more than happy to offer him a private, naked show if he’d ever indicate he actually wanted one. Instead he seemed willing to just let the longstanding _thing_ between them sizzle and spark as it would.

She’d tried to talk to him about it, hoping to move forward or put it out or, really, anything but just hang there, getting painful shocks and burns.

It seemed, though, that he had some sort of super power, some extrasensory capability for detecting her intentions and diverting her, deflecting, or just vanishing. Leaving her tongue-tied and frustrated. And still nursing her latest stings.

No. Neither Bellamy’s interest, nor hers, were the problem. The embarrassment came from her all-to-vivid awareness that nearly everyone else seemed to know about her predicament. Some were kind, some were practicing studied blindness, and some, like Roan, found the whole thing a very funny joke and took every opportunity to let her know they were laughing at her. At Bellamy. At both of them.

Before Bellamy reached her, Kane waved him over, so it was Roan by her side when she stepped out into the hallway.

They’d agreed they were both headed for the mess, and had just bent their steps that way, when Kyle Wick slid out from where he’d been lurking on the far side of a bulkhead. He headed straight for them, bristling with determination, his eyes snapping with what, after a moment, Clarke realized was anger. Not one of Kyle Wick’s primary emotions at all.

As soon as he was close enough to snarl in a furious whisper, he hissed to Roan, “What did you do to Raven? To get her to do your dirty work?”

Roan stopped moving, his eyebrows shooting up almost to his hairline. “Excuse me?”

Wick turned to Clarke, leaning in, his low voice nearly shaking with his outrage, “Raven is recording some of Roan’s people for him. Spying on them. For him,” he hooked a thumb over toward Roan, then added a quick glare in case Clarke hadn’t figured out whom he meant. “If they figure it out it they’ll come straight for her, straight for us! You have to tell her to stop!”

Completely startled, Clarke looked at Roan, “Is this true?”

“Yes,” Roan replied, without batting a single eyelash, his composure fully recovered.

“Why?” she demanded incredulously.

“I’m concerned that some of my soldiers are not as loyal as they ought to be.”

“So because you can’t keep order in your own house, you suck Raven into your mess with you?” Wick exclaimed, his outrage now bathed in a fresh wash of contempt.

Roan inclined his head thoughtfully and, after a long beat while he waited to make sure Wick was paying him full attention, spoke slowly. “I thought it was well understood, here in Arkadia at least, that we need a united front if we are all to survive.” Roan contrived to sound both reasonable and contemptuous at the same time.

Only briefly thrown off his game, Wick shot back after half a second with, “What does that have to do with Raven spying for you?”

Clarke mentally awarded Wick a few points for not wilting under Roan’s most condescending expression.

Roan was saying, “She has the skills, and given her well-known dislike for grounders, no one will pay much mind to her casting suspicious glares their way. And I sincerely doubt any of my troops even realize that voice recording is a thing that is possible.” His tone was very dry, almost droll, on this last observation.

Wick raised a very skeptical eyebrow. “And if you’re wrong?”

“If I’m wrong, they’ll complain to me and I can deal with it, or they’ll move on her. In which case I’ll kill them.”

He said this, Clarke noted, with the same calm imperturbability with which he would have told them that fire was hot, and rain was wet. The result was somehow all the more menacing than bluster would have been.

Roan’s response quieted Wick for a heartbeat or two anyway. Then he shook his head in disgust, “How did you even convince her to go along with such an insanely dangerous plan? She’s usually way too smart for dumbass shit like that!”

Clarke knew instantly, in that way you know things in a moment that would take you hours to methodically unravel all the clues that tipped you off, that Roan had just lost his temper. And that whatever he said next would be awful.

She still wasn’t prepared.

He leaned closer to Wick, close enough to give the appearance that he was sharing a confidence, nearly eliminating the space between them and speaking directly to Wick’s ear in a faux whisper, his rumbling voice deeper than ever. “I fucked her senseless. Then I whispered sweet words into her ear when she was too drunk with pleasure to understand what she was agreeing to do for love of me.”

Wick’s eyes bulged and he looked like he’d swallowed his tongue after being punched in the gut.

Roan rocked back, his tight smile the kind that made you want to run and hide, his eyes locked on Wick’s stunned face. “Feel free to share that with her, while you attempt to convince her to go back on her offer.”

Too frozen with shock at how quickly that had all escalated to think how to intervene without causing Wick to lose what dignity he had left, Clarke could only go with an imploring glance, the mantra ‘stay calm’ running through her brain and out her eyes as loudly as she could project it.

His shoulders almost heaving with the effort, Wick forced his hands open and himself to step backward. One step, and then another, and another, before turning on his heel, tossing out over his shoulder before he stomped away, “Maybe I will!”

Clarke turned on Roan with a furious scowl. “Was that necessary?”

Bastard actually smiled at her. “Yes.”

Denied that approach, she tried another. “Did you really manipulate Raven like that?”

It was his turn to let disbelief shade his features. “I thought the two of you were friends?”

Relief Clarke hadn’t expected to feel so strongly washed down her back in a long cool wave. “So you didn’t….?”

“No, I did.” His serious expression broke and he let a tiny, teasing grin curl the corners of his mouth. “As a thank you, after she agreed to help me. Something she agreed to do while in full possession of her senses.” He grew serious again, “Because it is in no one’s best interests for me to be assassinated and have Azgeda fall into the hands of your enemies.”

And the interlude was over and the realities of the impending end of the world came crashing back. “Is that a real possibility?”

“Yes.”

“That would be bad.” This was a colossal understatement, but it was the best Clarke could do unless she started shrieking in panic.

“Glad you think so. Not everyone will.” He cast his glance back toward the conference room.

“Kane would think so, too!”

“Plenty of your council won’t. Bellamy might be happy to help them along.”

“Bellamy wouldn’t do anything to help them!”

“Bellamy doesn’t do a lot of things he really wants to do. You among them.”

“Roan!”

“The future could be very short. You’re wasting it.”

Stung to defend…. she wasn’t at all sure whom, Clarke stared at her toes and muttered, “It’s complicated.”

“No. Not really.”

That brought Clarke’s head up with a snap. “Just because you and Raven make it look easy…!”

“It was easy. We were both drunk, both lonely, and we were the last two people at the party.”

It was only in that instant that Clarke realized how very much she had wanted to believe that there was more to Raven’s and Roan’s love affair than that.

Roan must have seen something of her feelings in her face, because he added more gently, “And less drunk, and less lonely in the morning.”

“It seems like a lot more than that!” she tried, clinging to something. Clinging to hope, maybe.

He shook his head abruptly, dismissing her romantic fantasies with a harsh wave of his hand. “No. My people distrust her – and they aren’t sure which is worse, that she’s Skaikru, or that she understands and is at ease with science and tech. She despises them in turn. Even if we’re both alive a year from now, we have no future, Raven and I. Which is why it’s so irritating to watch you and Bellamy act like love struck twelve year olds, when everyone can see very clearly that you are adults who long to be together, and nothing but your own cowardice is stopping you.”

On that note, Roan spun and stomped off in the same direction Wick had gone. Or not stomped, exactly, because he moved too quietly, too much the hunter for that, but he **_implied_** a stomp with every sharp swing of his broad shoulders.

Clarke was still gazing after him when Bellamy’s voice over her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts.

“What’s irritating our king today?”

Since the truth was impossible to encapsulate, Clarke settled on, “Wick.”

“Wick?”

“Was lurking about waiting for him, had decided that today was the day to throw down about Raven.”

Bellamy laughed, a short disbelieving bark of sound. “And how’d that go for him?”

Clarke turned fully around, trying not very hard to contain her smirk. “About like you’d think.”

Bellamy was already smirking back at her. “Roan handed him his ass.”

“In bloody hunks,” Clarke shook her head. “Everyone forgets, all the time, that Roan’s even faster with his words than his hands.”

And accurate as hell, too. He’d taken Wick’s deepest insecurities and jealousies, wrapped them into a verbal club and slammed them straight into his metaphorical belly. Clarke herself still had scars from some of Roan’s sharper remarks, the ones that had burned too deep in her memory to be soon forgotten.

“Come on,” Bellamy said. “You look like you really need lunch.”

~~~~

In the crowded mess it was hard to snag a table, but eventually Clarke and Bellamy squeezed in with a handful of the other delinquents. While searching the room, Clarke couldn’t help but notice that Raven was sitting with Roan, and despite his claims about mistrust and dislike, four of his honor guard were sitting with them, all of them laughing together about something or another.

Clarke was distracted all through the meal, trying to decide what to do with Wick’s information that Roan suspected at least some of his own people enough to have enlisted Raven’s help in spying on them.

She was still puzzling it out during her afternoon shift at the clinic, and throughout the evening meal as well. Finally Bellamy cornered her back in the conference room, where she’d been staring hard at the maps pinned to all the walls and covering the clear boards.

“What is it?” He said, his voice making her spin, her heart racing, startled out of her thoughts by Bellamy for the second time that day. “What’s got you so distracted and worried?”

“Roan. And Azgeda. And Raven.” She’d gotten that far, anyway, in all her thinking and worrying. Realized her need to share it all with Bellamy.

He pulled out a chair and dropped into it, nodding at the one next to him. “Okay. Tell me about it.”

So she did, editing out only Roan’s uninvited commentary on her and Bellamy, concluding, “And so, I’m not sure what to do next. Confront Raven? She’s not breaking any rules that I know about? In fact she’s probably helping us, if indirectly. Tell Kane or my mom? Make a big stink and make it all public? Let Roan’s people know he suspects something and end up driving it deep underground and that much harder to root out?”

Bellamy was silent for a time, thinking it all through. Clarke tried hard not to stare as he rubbed his fingers gently across his full lips, a habit she knew he was entirely unaware of having. It still left her fighting the desire to squirm in her seat.

Finally he dropped his hand and said, “I think…. we should let Raven know we know, but otherwise do nothing. Trust her to tell us whatever she thinks she needs to. We trust Raven, right?”

“Yes. Yes, we do.” Clarke nodded firmly.

“So. Trust her.”

“I’m not very good at ‘nothing’,” Clarke reminded him.

He smiled at her, reaching over to lightly brush the back of her hand, resting on the table between them. “No,” he agreed. “You’re not. But I think it’s the right move, in this case.”

Their eyes met. Their gazes locked.

Feeling the press of his fingertips like a hot brand on her skin, staring into the maelstrom of deep emotions swirling in Bellamy’s eyes, Clarke steeled herself to say something, anything...

Bellamy stood up abruptly. Scraping his metal chair loudly along the floor as he did.

“She’s probably still in her workshop. Let’s go find her now, okay?”

Clarke forced a bright smile, one that she hoped would fully disguise her internal shriek of frustration that he’d slipped away again, and that Roan was right. She was too much of a coward to force the issue.

There was just so much at stake, for them, for everyone else, and their partnership as friends, as leaders, was everything to Clarke. It was her one rock in a rapidly disintegrating world. If she broke it trying to resolve something he didn’t seem to need resolved, she’d never forgive herself. So she would endure. That’s what she did.

She was Clarke Griffin, and her people needed her focused on them, not her own disaster of a love life.

Clarke picked up her steps, hastening to catch up to Bellamy’s long strides. Having just resolved to be content with what she had (again), it would be stupid to screw it up by trailing sadly after him.

Bellamy had been right, of course. Raven was still in her workroom.

“If it isn’t the dynamic duo,” Raven said, glancing up from her worktable and pulling her headphones out of her ears as they drifted through her doorway. “Roan warned me you’d be coming along, sooner or later.”

“So, it’s true?” Clarke asked, once she’d circled close enough to Raven to speak gently. “You’re recording his people?”

“Yep.” Raven said, turning her attention back to the motor bits scattered along the work surface. “Found Monty’s stash of bugs, got them all working again.”

“When were you going to tell any of us?” Bellamy asked, his tone equally soft and encouraging.

“When there is something useful to report,” Raven replied, her voice tart and irritated. She dropped her tools with a sigh and turned to face them fully, leaning back against her bench. “Today I can report that his people hate our food, that they are bored, and that they think Roan is foolish to trust us so much. Also, Kyle Wick is an asshole.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “None of that seems to rise to the level of, you know,” her lips twisted in a mockery of the phrase, “actionable intel.”

“Wick meant well, you know,” Clarke said.

“No, he didn’t.”

“He still cares about you.”

“And I care about him despite the fact that he’s an asshole, so I’d like him to quit doing really stupid shit. A message you can deliver whenever you see him next.” Then she turned her back on them, stuck her ear buds back in her ears, and picked up her tools.

Clarke and Bellamy exchanged a long glance, sighed, and left her alone to get on with her new career in espionage. Hoping that their plan of doing nothing at all was really the right thing to do. At least for the moment.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time Raven finally dragged her stupid dead leg towards her room, leaning heavily on her stick the whole way, and it occurred to her to wonder briefly when she’d started to think of this space as ‘hers,’ she was exhausted, body and spirit. 

After Wick’s comment about recording Roan’s people, Raven realized she’d been so focused on listening in personally with her new super translator ears that she’d entirely overlooked all the big-brother spyware that had littered the Ark. As soon as he’d left her at the canteen, she’d dashed – as quickly as she could dash anywhere – back to her workroom and retrieved the box of listening devices Monty had rustled up for Pike and his crew. She’d already seen the box earlier that morning as she searched for parts for her microphone and the possibilities hadn’t even registered.

By midafternoon she’d rigged up a tiny network, concentrating on the sleeping quarters set aside for Roan’s guard and, with Roan’s help at lunch, planting the small devices on his three prime targets. 

She’d briefly considered leaving the devices in the various areas his guards lounged about in, but as quickly dismissed the idea. The devices would pick up way too much noise, plus lots of stuff she wasn’t interested in and didn’t want to know. Also, of course, there was the whole issue of massive invasion of privacy of her fellow Arkers. 

After a late evening meal – Roan and Kane and the rest had returned after twilight from their trip to a semi-distant village – she’d hooked Roan up with a tablet loaded with the afternoon’s data haul, a headset, and instructions. Then she went back to her workshop to continue catching up on all her real work that she’d let fall to the side during the day. To pass the time, she listened to the live feed from the Azgeda Honor Guards’ quarters. 

Her extremely dubious reward for that effort was to listen in as strangers gossiped crudely about her sex life while complaining about the habits and tastes of her fellow Arkadians. The short diversion of Clarke and Bellamy showing up to be gently critical hadn’t really been an improvement, either.

When Raven finally arrived at their room, she found Roan sitting on furs on the floor, leaning into the far wall directly opposite the door, his legs stretched out in front of him. His eyes were closed in concentration, earphones on his head, the tablet with the day’s recordings in his hands. The door was creaky on its ungreased hinges, and Roan opened his eyes as she shoved it closed, pulling off the headphones as he pushed himself to his feet.

“Anything new?” she asked him, crossing the floor directly into his open arms, tucking her head into his shoulder, leaning more than half her weight onto him, and letting him crush her into a welcoming embrace. 

He kissed the top of her head, before resting his cheek against her hair. “No. Just general boredom and barracks chatter. Which is a problem I’ve let fester too long. I think tomorrow we will have some exercises. Maybe go hunting.”

“Kane doesn’t have any other plans for you?”

“He’ll have to modify them. I’m tired of sitting around meetings all day anyway. I understand as much as I need to plan for what is coming. The only thing I’m really helping with is persuading village hedas to listen to Kane.”

He pulled back to catch her eyes. “You should come hunting with us, if the weather stays clear. You don’t get out enough.”

Raven was tempted. Really, really tempted. Those few quiet months between Mt. Weather and the coming of ALIE had held more good than bad, and she’d truly loved driving out with Bellamy and his crew. A day out beyond the walls with Roan sounded truly like a teenage dream come true. 

But, “Yeah. Thanks. I would love to go out with you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I was listening to the live feed from their quarters while I worked tonight. They don’t think a whole lot of us.” She gestured between them, “You and me. Together.”

“What did they say?”

She stepped away from him, ignoring the concern in his eyes and the hint of anger in his voice, and dropped down onto the small stool. She really wanted to take off her damn brace. “Well, on the one hand, they think it’s really impressive you seduced me – the great Skaikru scientist – who is also very hot and sexy.” 

This, in context, had not been as flattering as it might have been. Their speculation about her brace and mobility issues and how that affected the positions she enjoyed sexually had been particularly crude. She offered up a sassy smirk anyway, determined not to make a big deal of it. “So, lots of points to you for that. Even if it’s also clear they have no idea what I actually do all day.” 

Alchemy and/or blacksmithing were their best analogies. Raven had ultimately decided that she was just relieved they weren’t calling her a witch. Yet.

Roan stepped behind her and dropped his big warm hands on her shoulders, pressing his thumbs into the fleshy bit at the base of her neck, and starting to massage in slow circles. It felt so good Raven closed her eyes, dropped her head down, and actually purred.

“And on the other hand?” he eventually asked.

She sighed and addressed her knees, hoping he wouldn’t stop massaging her shoulders. This part had been both hysterical, and, no lie, a little terrifying. “They’re pretty sure my magic twat is unmanning you, making you ever more vulnerable to the Wanheda’s lies.”

“Oh.” He stopped his massage and came around to squat in front of her, looking up into her face. “Anyone in particular saying this? Or all of them equally?”

“They’re all impressed with your seduction game. But it’s really Brandon, the skinny ugly one you think is the real trouble? He’s the one who says the meanest shit. He’s also the one most worried about how my all-powerful coochie is weakening the strong fiber of Azgeda. Worried that maybe you’re too much a lover right now, too focused on my pretty face, and not enough of a warrior for your people.” She paused, then added, “You have some real assholes in your group, you know that?”

His expression was rueful. “I knew that, but confirmation is always good.”

“Why did you bring them, and not someone better?” she demanded.

“Better here, where I can keep my eye on them, and among people they largely can’t poison with their bitterness, than leave them unattended at home.”

“Who is minding your shop at home?” This hadn’t even crossed her mind as a minor concern. Not until now. 

He smiled in mild confusion at her metaphor and raised his brow to ask, “My shop?” 

“You know,” she bent again to the buckles and straps of her brace. “Short for workshop. Or a store. Either way. Your business. Where you do your work. _Kinging_ , in your case.” 

“Ah. My shop is being minded by friends, lieutenants and advisors I trust. Some who took the chip in Polis, and so believe in what ALIE is capable of. Others who respect your tech and think it’s better to trust you now than learn too late they should have but didn’t. Some last who don’t know what or who to believe, but are loyal to me, if only because they prefer me to any potential successor.” 

He held out his hand and, when she took it, tugged her to her feet. Then he reached for the bottom of her shirt and started to pull it up and over her head.

With her arms in the air and her voice muffled by the fabric of her jersey, she asked, “What are you doing?”

He tossed her shirt aside and reached to stroke his fingers along the side of her jaw, down her throat and between her breasts, coming to rest on the fastening of her trousers, his eyes locked on hers all the while. “I need to pay my respects to your magical coochie.”

Raven raised her brow, her lips tugging into her first smile in hours. “You do?”

He leaned down to press a kiss under her ear, then on her neck, down to her shoulder. “Yes. I do.”

“Why?”

Wrapping his hands around her waist, he lifted her easily up and into his arms, and turned to carry her to the bed. 

“It makes you smile,” he said, as he settled her onto her back, before crawling up and over her to blow a raspberry against her belly, which made her laugh. 

Not long after that, he pressed his tongue onto her clit, and made her gasp. And then he made her come, and after that, she slept.

~~~~

It wasn’t until the next afternoon, after Roan and his guard returned from the hunting expedition he’d dragged them all out on not long after dawn, that she turned up something new.

Fortunately she had a past history of being completely irritable when interrupted while deep in thought. So when she slammed her computer closed, spun around and bellowed, “What the fuck do you want?” into Harper’s face, no one thought it was because she’d been deeply absorbed in transcribing as quickly as she could the long anti-Roan, anti-Arkadia rant Brandon-the-asshole was delivering in an intense whisper to unidentified new suspect number four as they worked at butchering their morning’s haul. Raven thought, from the other sounds on her live feed, they were out by the fire-pit.

After Harper left, repaired tool in her hands, and many, many apologies ringing in her ears, Raven discovered that Roan’s chief suspect number two, a woman named Larkin, was quietly outlining a scheme to both Brandon and, it seemed, the new recruit. A man whose voice only Roan would be able to recognize. 

It was worse than Raven had thought, and she was mighty glad that glaring at her computer with her eyes wide in horror wasn’t completely uncommon for her.

Because she checked back in just as Larkin was saying, “We can break with Arkadia and, in the same blow, eliminate _his majesty_.” 

Raven’s new ALIE-installed translator software was more than good enough to pick up the rude implications of the word Larkin chose. 

“If we time it right, stage the scene,” Larkin continued, “we can make it look like he was killed by Skaikru for the crime of fucking their prize scientist. Then we can kill her for luring him to his destruction,” Larkin sounded almost gleeful at this thought, or as gleeful as the naturally dour woman could sound.

“Azgeda will rise up as one in retaliation for his death! He has plenty of supporters. Admirers. Even friends. And he is our King.” This was new-voice, sounding very impressed with the plan so far.

“Yes. Exactly,” Brandon-the-asshole agreed. “We’ll never have to discredit him.”

“And Arkadia will rise up to avenge her. They’re all very proud of her, between blowing people up, and blowing our King.” This time Larkin’s word choice was full of possessive respect, for the position if not for the man. “They think she’s their talisman in their new war.”

“Yes. They’ll rush to avenge her. Severing this abomination of an alliance at the same time.” Brandon again.

“What if…” this was the new voice, very tentative now, “what if they’re right? About this new apocalypse? They seem to believe completely in it.”

“They aren’t,” Larkin said. “They’re liars all the way up and down, just looking to get us to run scared so they can take what’s ours. It’s all an act.”

“But,” new voice was persistent, Raven gave him that much, “what if they are right?”

“Then,” snapped Brandon, “We all die together in the end anyway. But at least we don’t die on our knees, sucking off some bitch of an outsider.”

Raven jerked out her earbuds, snatched up her laptop, and marched out to find Roan.

~~~~

Ivon, Roan’s second, shook his head. “I don’t like this. It’s too risky.”

The three of them, Ivon, Roan and Raven, were sitting at one of the small tables at the bar after supper, their conversation covered by the music and the noise around them.

Ivon had been in Polis. He made no pretense of having much liking or respect for Arkadia, but he’d understood enough of what was happening with ALIE, then and since, to believe them about the coming catastrophe. He’d also been Roan’s friend for a long time, one of Roan’s few conduits to information from Azgeda during his time in exile.

Raven had also noticed that all the plotters shut the hell up, even toned down their gossip about her, whenever Ivon was around. 

Roan had just declared that he and Ivon were going to have to kill all of them, the whole of his guard, save only the two scouts Ivon vouched for after a lifetime of working with them. 

When Raven had exclaimed in shock, Roan quietly explained that the rest were too poisoned by Brandon and Larkin. If he let them live, they’d bring their contagion back and infect all of Polis and Azgeda. 

He proposed turning the tables on them just when the plotters were confident that he’d walked into their trap. Seizing the element of surprise and killing them on the spot.

“It is risky,” Roan agreed, acknowledging Ivon’s concern with a quick nod. “But it’s fast and efficient and we can get it done in the next few days.”

“What if we just kill them in their sleep, here in Arkadia, where they think themselves safe? Sneak the bodies out one at a time afterwards and dump them in the reservoir? Or in the mines?” Ivon suggested.

Raven pinched her good leg, reminding herself that this wasn’t a dream. She was really sitting with the king of Azgeda and his most trusted second as they planned to murder most of their countrymen who’d accompanied them to Arkadia. Much the same way they’d planned out the hunting trip they’d led their Azgedans out on at the break of dawn today, returning with enough fresh game that grilled kabobs had appeared on the evening menu.

“No,” Roan shook his head. “I don’t want to leave the mess on Kane’s doorstep, or be asked to explain, or fake a retaliation if any of our people blame Arkadia.”

Ivon scowled. “The key point is the traitors are dead. We can clean up afterwards in a lot of different ways.”

Roan nodded, musing thoughtfully, “True. Maybe we could set it up so that it looks like the Trikru did it? One of their Anti-Arkadia groups, maybe? Trying to drive a wedge between Azgeda and Arkadia?”

Raven finally interjected, “That’s not fair to Indra. She’s been good to us. Much better than we deserve some of the time.”

Roan’s side-eye exchange with Ivon made it clear enough he didn’t give a shit about Indra’s political problems, but he said only, “True enough. So that’s why I think springing the trap and just taking them out ourselves and leaving their bodies to rot is the simplest approach.”

Ivon just shook his head, still looking unalterably opposed. “The chance of you dying is too great.”

“Fine,” Roan said, looking irritated. “Give me another option.”

“Could we just call them out publicly?” Ivon asked, lifting his shoulders a little helplessly. “Accuse them of treason, present your proof,” he nodded carefully at Raven at this, “and execute them outside the gates?”

“No.” Roan was shaking his head. “Absolutely not. Too risky. Too many people think like they do. I don’t want any martyrs. Just soldiers who died a long way from home in a dangerous world.”

A little silence fell over their table, and the music seemed loud in the absence of their voices.

“What about… the pauna?” Raven said, not sure where and how the idea had come to her, but liking it more with each millisecond she considered it.

Roan raised his brow, clearly surprised, and then he started to nod at her, his grin growing wider and wider as he did.

Ivon looked baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a huge mutant,” Roan informed him, still grinning, “descended from an animal kept in captivity in the before times for the amusement of the masses. A group of them nests at the old zoo.” Roan added as a clarifying aside to Ivon, "where the people once came to gawk at the paunas." And then he went on to explain the pauna itself.

He sketched them so vividly that Raven finally asked, “Have you seen one with your own eyes?”

Roan nodded. “I have. I couldn’t believe the stories, couldn’t believe there was any forest creature that couldn’t be killed by skilled enough hunters.”

“And?” Ivon asked.

“And I think it could be done, but not by one hunter alone, or even a small group. It would take a large party, almost a full company, I think, to drive the creatures to a prepared killing field.” He turned to look at Raven, “I’m surprised that you Arkadians didn’t offer to help with that. Your guns would make all the difference.”

“We did,” Raven lifted her shoulder and let it drop, “Indra refused. Still didn’t want guns, still didn’t want to disrupt the ‘old ways,’ the ones good enough for their ancestors, or to disturb the balance of the forest. ‘Never know what fiercer creature the pauna keeps at bay,’ she said.”

“Men,” Roan said. “That’s who the pauna keeps away.”

“So, is your idea,” Ivon nodded at Raven, “to trick our soldiers into the pauna’s path and have them die by pauna attack? Or to kill them in such as manner as to make it look like they died by pauna attack?”

“Either, I guess,” Raven said.

“It should be easy enough to set a lure for Brandon and the rest, tempt them to want to pursue a creature too terrible for the Trikru to hunt,” Roan said. “And then….”

“And then, one way or another….” Ivon said.

“They die,” Raven concluded.

~~~~~

“Just how long has this been going on?” Kane demanded, his voice deep with outrage and just shy of shouting as he stopped his pacing to glare down at Raven, who was seated next to Roan at the small conference table Clarke knew all too well.

Raven snapped her head up, matching Kane glare for glare. “Thirty-six hours. No more.”

“What made you think you had the authority to pull a stunt like this, without any consultation with anyone?” 

“What makes you think I needed any authority beyond my own?” Raven retorted, her tone very nearly matching his. “I’m the only senior mechanic you have left. I’m Crew Chief. I’m _**it**_. Allocating equipment is my damn job.”

That actually stopped Kane, to Clarke’s mild surprise.

After a moment he continued, more calmly. “You’re right. You didn’t. But you used Ark resources to investigate a situation that could implicate us whatever the outcome.”

“So, it would be better not to have learned about this in time to prevent it?” Raven was incredulous as she said this, waving her arm expansively over the table.

Kane shrugged, acquiescing slightly. 

“I agreed to help Roan, because he asked me,” Raven continued on after a beat of waiting for any further objections of Kane. “As a friend. And as an important ally of Arkadia. It seemed a reasonable request. I also told him I would report to you whatever we discovered. And here I am. Reporting.”

“You’re not just reporting,” Bellamy pointed out, speaking up from his spot on the opposite side of the room, where he was propped up with his back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest and his brow stormy. “You’re also telling us that you’ve gone ahead and made a plan that involves you, as well as Roan, acting as bait. That is a risk to us. To Arkadia. You _are_ it. Our Crew Chief. And our friend, Raven.” He added the last in a much gentler tone, half scolding, half pleading.

Roan finally spoke up from where he sat next to Raven, very much at his ease. He swung his head to take in all three of the Arkadians, Kane, Bellamy, and Clarke. “You would have reached the same conclusion we did.”

“That both of you have to go?” Bellamy said, his eyebrows almost disappearing underneath his shaggy bangs.

“Their scheme relies on angering Arkadia. If they weren’t targeting Raven because of me, they’d be targeting Kane, or Dr. Griffin, or the Wanheda, or,” Roan caught his eyes, “even you, Bellamy Blake.”

Bellamy scowled and looked away, but said nothing.

“If we’re separated, Raven here in Arkadia and me out hunting, then the traitors will break out into smaller groups as well. Taking them down in two places is much risker than luring them all to one spot. We go together.”

Kane pulled out a chair and dropped down into it. “He has a good point,” he said, waving half-heartedly at Roan. “If it were anyone else….”

“But it’s not,” Raven interrupted, her voice hard. “It’s me. I’m what you’ve got.”

“And lucky to have you,” Roan said. Not soothing. Simply asserting a fact. He looked directly at Kane. “Raven is the one who suggested the pauna.

“I’m not sure we should go with the pauna plan,” Clarke said, speaking up for the first time since being roused from her barely-warmed bed by Bellamy on the comms, telling her that Raven and Roan were ready to file a report about their activities. 

“They have to have learned something, and given the time, something not good,” he’d said, in a remarkable example of stating the obvious. 

The news was definitely not good. 

They were all looking at her now, so Clarke explained. “The pauna is not a controllable animal. It’s… well it’s terrifying. I’ve seen it up close and personal and I barely survived.” As she spoke she remembered the hot foul breath, the raging screams, the huge yellow teeth and black claws, and she shivered with ghosts of fear and adrenaline.

“I know,” said Roan. “I’ve seen it, too, though less closely than you.” He looked at Kane. “I wanted to see the creature so terrible even the Trikru wouldn’t meet it head on, so I visited the area and stayed around until I’d observed it for several days. I still can’t believe the Trikru never chased it out.” This last was more of an aside, and full of judgment.

“Mountain men kept wide of it, I think,” said Kane.

“At the cost of how many Trikru? Woodland game? Animal herds? Cropland? In Azgeda, no deadly wild beast is suffered near our settlements. The king sends hunters to clear the woods of the dire wolves, the bears, and other such creatures that think to make an easy living near human homes.” Roan sounded both contemptuous and bragging, all at once.

“Indra says it is traditional,” Kane shrugged somewhat helplessly. Clarke knew he’d tried more than once to get Indra to allow a hunting party to clear the pauna, both before and after ALIE. “The commander has always refused to order an expedition because it served its purpose in the woods.”

Roan very nearly rolled his eyes so great was his exasperation. “That’s exactly the kind of idiocy you get when you’ve been held in thrall by a computer talking out of the mouths of children for the last century.”

Which stung Clarke enough to say, “Lexa faced the pauna, too. Right alongside me!”

“And would have died there, in the pauna’s lair, were it not for your courage and resourcefulness.” Roan bowed his head to her, no mockery this time. Nothing but respect.

“How did you know that?” Clarke gaped, unable to conceal her surprise.

“It impressed Lexa a great deal. She told me about it.”

“When?”

“When I was in Polis, same as you. Only,” he shrugged and offered her a quick, twisted smile, “because I didn’t spit in her face or threaten to kill her, and she wanted my mother to know where I was, I dined with her most days.”

For a shocked heartbeat, Clarke could only stare at him, astonished by the sharp little pang of resentment that shot through her at his words. While she, Clarke, the great Wanheda, had been eating alone off trays carried into her gilded prison by silent guards, Roan and Lexa had apparently been sitting down together to gossipy meals, chatting with ease about her as they ate!

“Unlike Clarke and Lexa, I was never threatened by it,” Roan told them, filling in Clarke’s silence. “I was merely studying it, trying to determine its capabilities and habits. Enough to know that it would take a bigger and more cautious squad than my honor guard to root it out using traditional hunting weapons.”

“You mean, not guns,” Kane said.

“Yes.”

“Do you want guns now?” Bellamy asked.

“Knowing nothing of this plan, would Arkadia have loaned them to me for a hunting expedition based on little more than boredom?”

“No!” Bellamy and Kane answered immediately and nearly in unison. Clarke swallowed the ‘Yes!’ she’d been half a beat too slow to verbalize.

“Exactly,” Roan nodded sharply. Then he tilted his head and smiled one of his more charming smiles. “But if you wouldn’t mind posting a few of your men with guns ahead of time, that would raise the odds in our favor.”

“Do you want to kill the pauna?” Kane asked curiously, ignoring Roan’s request for now.

“No! Absolutely not. That’s a problem for the Trikru.” Here Roan waved a quick dismissive hand. “I want the pauna credited with the killing of my traitorous guards, and for that I need its fearsome reputation unspoiled.”

“And how do you plan to lure the pauna to your men, or your men to the pauna?” Bellamy inquired.

“I intend to send them directly into the den to flush the paunas out to Ivon and myself. It’s how we would take out a great brown bear. A… I think the old word was ‘Grizzly’?”

Bellamy looked mildly impressed. Though whether that was at the ‘Grizzly’ or at Roan’s plan, Clarke wasn’t certain. “And then?”

“And then close the old gates, just as Clarke did. Only this time, trapping my traitors inside,” Roan said.

Clarke immediately objected. “Roan, those gates are completely unreliable. It was sheer luck Lexa and I found one that held.”

“I suspected as much. So…” Roan turned to Raven, a small little smile playing around his lips. Wicked and proud all at once.

“So we’ll bring the walls down.” Raven said.

“How!” Kane asked.

“Small explosive charges, pressure sensitive, mounted on arrows,” Raven explained. “Roan drew the enclosure for me, says he’s good enough to hit the weak spots if I point them out. I have two different scanners that combined will tell me in minutes which are the best targets.”

After a moment of raised brows and appreciative nodding all around the room, Bellamy said to the table, but mostly to Kane, “I think it’s a good plan.”

Kane looked at Roan for a moment, then asked, “How do you know your men won’t kill you before you get there?”

“They might try.” Roan clearly wasn’t worried about this. “In which case it’s up to Ivon, myself and our loyal troops to win the fight. But I truly believe Brandon can be drawn by the opportunity to show up the Trikru.”

“And how will Brandon be drawn into that?” Clarke inquired, allowing her skepticism full play in her voice.

Roan looked straight back at her. “Well,” he drawled slowly, “Someone will have to tell the story of the great Wanheda and the Great Commander Lexa’s near brush with death, tomorrow night at the bonfire.”

“Someone?” Kane asked, his eyebrows at full are-you-serious mode.

“Who is your best storyteller?” Roan asked.

Clarke was aware, in the way that a person is aware, that she, Bellamy, and Kane were all three working very hard at not making any eye contact.

“Can you tell the story, Clarke?” Roan asked, something in the tone of his voice making it clear he’d picked up on the suddenly uncomfortable tension.

Raven, Kane and Bellamy raced to be the first person to declare, “No!” as loudly and firmly as possible.

Clarke knew she agreed with them. She wasn’t the kind of person who kept people hanging on her every gesture as she built universes with words. But she rather wished they hadn’t all been so very emphatic about it.

Finally, after another prickly moment, Bellamy said, “I’ll do it. I can tell the story.”

“Can you do it well, though?” Roan asked doubtfully. “Like a proper storyteller? Set it up to lure Brandon in, light a fire inside him to better the Wanheda and Commander Lexa combined?”

“I spent sixteen years telling stories to keep Octavia quiet and enthralled. I’m very good at it. I can set the bait.” He raised his brow at Roan. “Closing the trap is up to you.”

There was a little more table chatter after that, but it hardly mattered. The discussion was done and Roan’s and Raven’s plan accepted. They left together as soon as Kane dismissed them.

“Are we sure helping him is a good idea?” Bellamy asked as soon as the door clicked shut behind them.

“Yes!” Clarke said. “We are! He’s a good king, Bellamy. And he’s the best hope Azgeda has.”

“Do we care if Azgeda has any hope?”

“Bellamy!”

“We remain true to the Ark’s mission,” Kane said, his voice brooking no argument. “Humanity. All of us. Not just our clan or tribe or family.”

“And anyway,” Clarke reminded them. “It’s Raven, too. And we do care about her. She’s our friend. And,” Clarke wasn’t very proud of thinking this, but felt it needed to be said anyway, “we need her alive.”

“Okay. I agree. I just wanted to make sure someone said it aloud.” Bellamy turned to Clarke. “I know most of the story, but you should probably tell it to me again. Just to be sure.”

Clarke nodded and stood up. “Of course.”

They were almost out the door when Kane’s voice stopped them. “Did you know about Raven’s spying?”

Clarke exchanged a quick guilty glance with Bellamy, then they both sighed and turned back to face their scolding. 

“Yes,” Bellamy admitted, while Clarke added, “Wick figured it out and told me yesterday.”

“And you didn’t tell me, because….?”

“We trust Raven,” Bellamy said.

After a moment of searching their faces, Kane nodded in tired acquiescence, and dismissed them with a wave of his fingers.

About halfway down the corridor, before the silence could get too heavy, Clarke said, “How much do you remember about the pauna story?”

“We should go over it again. Details matter, help increase the drama and suspense.”

“I…” Clarke hesitated, then got the rest out in a rush before she lost her courage, “there are other storytellers. We’d have to explain why, or enough anyway, but it doesn’t have to be you. If you’re uncomfortable telling a story about Lexa.”

“You saved her ass, right?” Bellamy looked down at her as they walked, a quick grin flashing across his face.

“Yeah,” Clarke couldn’t quite stop her answering grin, “I did.”

“Then it will be fine.” A few steps later he added, “I might, you know, for effect, exaggerate her fears and your bravery… If you don’t mind.”

“No, no. It’s in a good cause,” Clarke hastened to assure him. Whatever hurts and regrets she had about Lexa were her own, and they really had nothing at all to do with their shared adventure with the pauna.

“Do you want to tell me again tonight? Or in the morning?” he asked.

“Now is fine. Tomorrow will be busy as ever.” After half a second, she added, self-consciously firming up her voice and making it casual and bright, “Do you want to come to my room? I have a hot pot and some things to make tea?”

“I… uh, sure.” 

Clarke told herself she only imagined Bellamy swallowing hard.

“That sounds good,” he said, his voice stronger. His ‘he’d made his decision and was going to stand by it’ voice.

Clarke nodded several times. “Good. Come on, then.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Raven.”

Roan’s voice was buzzing in her ears, but her focus was on the explosive charge in her hands.

“Raven.”

He was closer now, standing behind her and to her left. His voice was calm and quiet. Also insistent.

She ignored him for just a moment longer, until…there. She gently laid the finished arrow down on her table and looked up to meet his eyes. “Yes?”

“Have you eaten since breakfast?”

Raven frowned. “No. But it’s not lunchtime yet, is it?”

“The afternoon is gone. The mess opens for the evening meal soon.”

And just like that, hunger washed over her and she realized her stomach was not only a hollow void, it was trying to digest itself. “I guess I got busy,” she said faintly.

“Here,” He set a bowl of berries down in front of her. “I begged these from the servers. And this.” A cloth-wrapped bread roll appeared next to the bowl.

Raven had a handful of berries in her mouth before she realized she forgotten to say thank you, so she mumbled and nodded vigorously while he smiled fondly at her.

She also tried to imagine Roan ‘begging’ for anything, and her imagination, which was excellent, thank you very much, failed at the task. She decided that he meant he’d asked politely, perhaps with a charming smile attached. 

To him that probably was ‘begging’.

By the time she’d wolfed down the berries and was swallowing the last bits of torn up bread roll, chased with the tepid water in her workroom thermos, her blood sugar had begun to climb enough that she believed she could stand up without swaying. In another minute or two.

“How are the arrows?” he asked, leaning over to inspect them. Lifting them carefully, after her nod of permission, one by one to test for weight and balance.

“Done,” she said. “I’ve made you ten. That should be more than enough.” It was also two more than the eight she’d promised Bellamy she would limit herself to, so as not to waste gunpowder. But she remembered too many instances when ‘enough’ wasn’t quite good enough after all.

“Six would have been plenty.”

“I hope you’re right. But you have ten.”

“Thank you.” He carefully set down the arrow he’d been holding, and then looped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into a one-armed hug, close enough to press a kiss to the top of her head. 

She raised her face to his and met his eyes and smiled encouragingly, the only invitation he needed to kiss her lips next.

A knock and a cough from the doorway interrupted them. 

It was Kyle Wick, who’d been brought up to speed earlier in the day by Kane, mostly so he wouldn’t try again to make an issue of Raven’s working on Roan’s behalf.

“Hey,” he said, covering up his poor timing with a bright smile and an awkward wave. 

Roan didn’t help, refusing to move away from Raven or even disentangle himself. On her high stool Raven was trapped between Roan and her workbench, so she couldn’t move away either. She felt herself flushing.

“Hate to interrupt,” Kyle said, working hard on not staring, “but I’ve got something for you guys. Something Kane asked me to work on.”

It was trackers, tiny radio beacons that Kyle had refashioned into small broaches. “Clarke remembered that they used them at the Mountain, and a bunch ended up here in the infirmary. They injected their captives with them, so as to recapture them if they got out. I figured you wouldn’t actually want me to sink them into your muscle fiber, so you get jewelry instead.”

“Why?” Roan said, once he’d finally abandoned his spot next to Raven and was curiously turning the device Kyle had handed him in his long fingers.

“Think of it as insurance. If things don’t go as planned, if you get separated from the group, or from each other, whatever. I’ll be able to find you with the trackers using our sensor array and drones.”

Roan nodded, and looked up to meet Kyle’s eyes head on. “That’s good. I’ll feel better knowing you can find us. Find Raven. If things go badly. Thank you very much.”

~~~~

Raven accepted the mug of beer from Roan, leaning sideways as she did so he could take his place next to her on one of the log benches that surrounded the outside fire-pit. The bench wasn’t that crowded, but he pressed close to her side anyway.

A few days ago, this much public intimacy from him would have embarrassed her. But tonight, telling herself that it was all for the good cause of further pissing off Brandon, she took advantage of the opportunity to lean right back into him, pressing her good thigh into his, nestling closer as he adjusted himself to drape his arm around her back.

The fire-pit had been popular pretty much since they built it, back in the winter. Now, with the coming of summer and the lighter evenings, and the full awareness that this freedom was limited and precious, nearly every Arker who could manage it spent at least a portion of the evening outside when the weather was fine, as it was this night. The sky was high and clear, still golden blue to the west, twilight purple creeping along the edge of the tree line that surrounded Arkadia.

The area beside the fire-pit had become a performance spot, with singers, poets, musicians, actors and storytellers taking turns entertaining anyone who turned out to hear them.

Raven sipped at her beer, a strange-tasting alcoholic drink she and the rest of her friends had quickly adapted to once another of the clans offered a few kegs in exchange for some medical supplies. It was much less strong than the whiskey or the moonshine that made its way from hand to hand, and Raven found she preferred it as a result. It was much easier to keep a clear head drinking the weaker brew.

The current performers, a trio of women singing along to tambourines and a recorder, finished up their set to the applause and whistles of the crowd.

Into the lull of the singers cleaning up their equipment and stools, Ivon called out to the crowd, “Are any of you here able to suggest better game than rabbits? They’re filling enough, but not much of a test of our skill.”

Other Azgedans, clapping and calling out, immediately echoed his call. “Yes, yes! Something bigger!”

“Something bolder!”

“Something worthy of us!”

Dr. Jackson, who was serving as the unacknowledged MC tonight, shrugged. He was no hunter and everyone knew it. “Anyone?” he called out to the audience.

The few Ark hunters present shook their heads, calling out things like ‘nope,’ or ‘just rabbits and deer, a turkey if you’re lucky.’

“No great fearsome creatures?” Larkin asked from her spot a quarter-turn around the fire from Roan and Raven. “Something to test a true member of the Azgedakru?”

“Well….,” drawled someone in a smart-alecky tone Raven immediately recognized. 

She swiveled her head around and finally spotted him, sprawled on the ground near to the performance zone, a bottle and a cup at his side. Jasper’s grin was more than a little wicked and definitely drunk, as he pulled himself up to his feet, swaying only slightly, to declaim loudly enough to be heard all the way to the front gate guardhouse, “There’s always the pauna…”

The cheers and whistling and applause from the Arkers present was instantaneous. Raven worked hard to keep her expression wary and disapproving, lest a triumphant grin give away the game.

No one had prepped Jasper. No one had even considered enlisting him. He was too unreliable these days, seized by whims that only he thought were funny and tears that came out-of-the-blue. He was chortling evilly now, in a way that couldn’t have been more precisely designed to rouse the curiosity and the pride in the Azgedans glaring at him from around the fire. Not even if Kane and Bellamy had prepped him for weeks. 

Raven wanted to hug him and pet him and beg him to put the damn whiskey down for a few days because it made him mean.

“Pauna?” Larkin called out her question.

One of the senior guards, who’d seen the paunas at distance, spoke out, directing a very persuasively quelling glare at Jasper as he did so. 

“I’ve seen them,” he said. “They’re descendants of gorillas, one of the great apes. The old zoo in the capital city had a few family groups, struggling to save them from extinction before the cataclysm. But without humans around to hunt them, they’ve thrived. And changed. And grown. They’re predators now, and meat eaters. Five, even six hundred pounds and more of killing machine, covered in thick fur that would defeat most arrows and blades, assuming you’d ever get close enough to try. Their claws can cut through steel panels. They take down moose and panther and bear. One ripped the arm clean off of one of our senior officers, pulled it straight out of her shoulder. She never even knew they were in the woods, and died for all our ignorance.”

“You were born in space!” called out another of the Azgedans. “You exaggerate what you don’t know.”

The major turned his head, searching out the Azgedan who taunted him. “We’ve seen so much more than that since we fell to earth,” he said to her, his suddenly hollow eyes daring a challenge that did not come. After a moment he went on, “I’m not exaggerating. If anything, my words are probably insufficient. It’s hard now to believe such a creature walks in this world, alive in the light of day.”

“The Trikru fear them! And respect them.” Harper called out. “They have lots of stories about them. Lincoln told us so many. All about how huge the paunas are, and their fangs and their claws and their incredible strength.”

To drown out the jeers Harper received from the Azgedans, Monty called out, “Commander Lexa herself ran from a pauna! Clarke saved her. If it wasn’t for Clarke….” 

Monty trailed off awkwardly, everyone present suddenly having visions of the many possible alternate futures if Lexa had died that day. 

“Clarke battled the pauna and won!” cried out Nate Miller. “Three cheers for Clarke Griffin! Pauna Slayer!!”

Bryan promptly took up the call, leading a rousing round of cheers that rose several times before ringing off the metal walls of the ring behind them. Then he bellowed, “Sto-ry! Sto-ry! Sto-ry!”

Raven had to bite the inside of her cheeks to stop any grin from leaking out. Her friends were performing a script they’d never seen and had no idea existed. Brandon and Larkin and the rest of the Azgedans, even, bless him, Ivon, were hanging on every word.

Clarke had been sitting with her mom a few feet away from Raven, on the next log over, and now eager hands and voices were pushing and pulling her out into the circle. “Tell us! Tell us the story of the pauna!”

On her feet now, Clarke backed away, back toward her mother, raising her hands and shaking her head, a rosy blush flaring in her cheeks. Booze or embarrassment, Raven couldn’t tell.

“I can’t! I can’t!” she cried, her voice full of laughter. “I’m not any good with telling stories!”

“Tell us, tell us, tell us!” the audience chanted, stomping and clapping to the beat.

Clarke just shook her head, laughing and blushing harder. Finally, when there was a pause, she said, “Ask Bellamy. He knows the story!”

The ringleaders, Jasper among them now, chased down and tugged a reluctant Bellamy Blake from the edge of the seating area to the heart of the performance zone. Raven was sure the reluctance wasn’t wholly an act either. Since Gina’s death he could hardly ever be prevailed upon to tell stories, even to small groups, much less to crowds, despite being asked often. 

What he’d said to Roan at their meeting with Kane was true, and Raven and Kane and Clarke had all known it was true. Bellamy was a magical storyteller. He’d never need to learn to play an instrument to hold a crowd, because he had his voice, and his face, and his body and with those he had no equal.

It was just that this story would be far more personal than the old stories he used to tell. Stories about the gods of Olympus or Atlantis, of Loki the trickster, and of Nanabozho and Hiawatha and their grandmother Nokomis. Tales about clever Anasazi, and the Leopard that wouldn’t change its spots. Those were the stories he used to tell over the fire at night.

Catching the tenor of the crowd, particularly the dark and doubtful looks among Roan’s traitors, Raven was very glad that Bellamy was already committed to telling this story. He probably would have had to tell it anyway, given the prevailing mood, but at least this time he was prepared.

Bellamy ducked his head, shook it, smiled, tried to wave people away, but finally acquiesced. Raven knew, from having watched him do this before, that about half way through his reluctance itself had become part of his performance. A story begged for is a story well received.

He demanded a drink to begin, and quickly a cup of whiskey arrived, followed by a mug of beer. Bellamy tossed back the whiskey in a single go, handed off the cup, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Then he settled onto the tall stool he preferred, one foot hooked on a lower bar, his beer on an upended log by his side.

Raven leaned closer to Roan, setting down her own empty cup so she could wrap her free hand around his thigh. He slid his hand further around her in response, his warm fingers slipping up against the skin of her back where her shirt was riding up.

She met his eyes, and while he nodded and smiled briefly, the members of his honor guard commanded most of his attention and soon enough his gaze was drawn back to them. Raven turned to look at Bellamy, who was pulling off his jacket and pushing up his sleeves, shaking his hair out of his eyes and generally making a performance of readying himself to begin. 

The story was going to be great tonight, she could tell. Already the air was vibrating with it. 

“Once upon a time,” Bellamy began, “there was a girl who fell from the sky. Her name was Clarke Griffin.”

The audience was already hooting and whistling in approval.

Raven glanced over at Clarke, who had the strangest expression on her face as she watched Bellamy embark on the tale, embarrassment, trepidation, and pride all wound up together. 

“She met a girl from Earth,” Bellamy said, his voice getting richer and deeper with every word as he settled into his rhythm, reaching for control of his audience. The whole time, his eyes were fixed on Clarke, “Her name was Lexa Kom Trikru, and the blood in her veins was dark as night.”

Kane, Raven saw, was on the far side of the circle, standing next to Colonel Miller, both of them warily observing the audience surrounding the fire-pit.

“Lexa and Clarke were determined to stop the fighting between the Skaikru and the Trikru, blades and guns taken up in ignorance and fear where they hoped friendship and trust and trade could bloom.”

Raven held back her sneer, but only just. Clarke might have hoped for peace between their peoples, but as far as Raven could judge that had not been Lexa’s first, or second, or ever, goal. 

Looking around the circle to distract herself from her never-ending bitterness about Lexa, Raven’s gaze fell on Clarke’s mom. Abby was glancing back and forth from her daughter to Bellamy, her own eyes glowing.

Raven bumped Roan’s shoulder with her own. “Check out the mother of the bride,” she whispered, jerking her chin towards Abby.

Roan looked, then he leaned his head closer to Raven. “Counting grandchildren?” he whispered.

Raven sniggered so hard, trying not to laugh out loud, that the air blowing out her nose was actually mildly painful. 

“Hush!” The woman on Raven’s other side leaned forward to shoot both her and Roan a very dirty look.

They glanced sideways at each other, and then had to look away quickly so they didn’t burst into a fresh round of sniggering, though he pulled her even closer for a fierce one-armed hug before letting her go and settling in to watch his targets. 

Raven returned her attention to Bellamy.

He was leaning forward on his stool now, his hand resting on one thigh so he could gesture freely with the other, pointing in more or less the right direction as he said, “Clarke also desperately needed Lexa’s help to rescue our people from Mt. Weather, where they were being held against their will by President Wallace and his soldiers. Imprisoned just as completely by the Mountain Men were scores of people of the clans. Only they were locked in cages while they waited to be bled to death, their lives taken from them so the Mountain Men could save their own.”

Raven looked over to Monty and Harper, who were sitting on the ground near Jasper. She was curled between Monty’s legs, with his arms wrapped tightly around her, both their expressions just better than grim. They’d had it as rough as anyone who’d survived the mountain, and alone of the Arkers had been put into cages, and the memories of their ordeals there had to be particularly ugly. 

Raven earnestly hoped Bellamy had said all he was going to say about that.

It seemed he had. He settled back again, his arms relaxed and still. “Alone we stood almost no chance at all of ever getting our people home alive. With the help of Lexa and the Trikru and the forces of the coalition, we had a chance to save them, and her people too.”

“ ** _You_** saved them!” called out a voice from the crowd. “You saved us all,” cried out another.

“It took all our forces,” Bellamy spoke gently, but as he looked slowly around the audience his expression was solemn and heavy with meaning, “united together as one, to save those inside the mountain.”

The crowd settled back again, Bellamy’s soft rebuke rippling through the audience and beyond.

“While the talks between Clarke and the Trikru Commander were going slowly,” Bellamy paused then and made a droll face. Letting his listeners know that the chastising was over with, for now at least, “so slowly they might just as well as have been travelling backward rather than forward...” Bellamy waited for the obedient chuckles to die down, then started up again. “Clarke asked for a break. To clear her head, she said, and to let tempers settle down again. Time for her to take a walk in the woods near the village. Near TonDC.”

The crowd, many of them already knowing some version of the tale “ahh’d” in recognition and, Raven was sure, appreciation that Bellamy was moving quickly to the meat of the story.

“General Quint, a Trikru war leader present at the meeting, was angry about the plans being drawn up. He was angry that his brother had died in Commander Lexa’s ill-fated assault on the drop ship. He was angry about the new alliance between the Commander and Skaikru. He was angry to learn the mountain men were just men like himself. Men with one great vulnerability, a vulnerability Quint wished to exploit. He wished to assault the mountain directly, and drive the mountain men out to face their certain doom. He disdained Clarke and Skaikru for their mercy, for their desire to stay the final blow. He said ‘blood must have blood’ was the way of the Trikru and it was wrong to ignore it.”

Bellamy was watching Clarke again, and Raven let her gaze follow his. Clarke looked solemn, and a little sad. 

“Quint trailed Clarke into the woods, tracking her silently as she wandered deeper and deeper into the forest. Clarke was walking, deep in thought, when something – a sound, a cough, a snapping twig, or maybe just that glimmer you get, something just in the corner of your eye – made her glance around.” 

Bellamy paused briefly, raising his hand to wiggle his fingers just out of the corner of his eye, to peer around in caution and alarm, his eyes wide with worry, sketching the scene with his body and his face as much as with his words.

“She saw Quint behind her, his face twisted with hate. When Quint realized he’d been spotted, he fired an arrow right at Clarke, missing her by just a few inches.”

Raven heard Roan snort softly beside her, “I wouldn’t have missed that shot.”

She rolled her eyes, but let his boasting pass unremarked. He probably wasn’t even really boasting. Just noting a fact.

“Clarke started to run, trying to circle back to the village, back to people, back to safety. Her heart was pounding, her breath pulling hard in her chest, she ran until she could run no longer, and then, over the ridgeline in front of her she saw rescue. She saw Major Byrne of the Arkadian Guard.”

Bellamy mimed exaggerated relief, “ _Major Byrne_! Clarke called, _Major Byrne! I need your help!_ ”

“But,” Bellamy looked back to the audience, shaking his head, his face a study in confusion and growing horror, “Something was wrong. Major Byrne was staggering, not running, and as Clarke watched, the major spun awkwardly over the uneven ground. And as she turned Clarke realized to her horror that Major Byrne's right arm had been ripped straight out of its socket! Her blood was spurting out of the artery in great crimson loops, draining away the last of the Major’s life as Clarke ran toward her.”

“When the Major saw Clarke coming, she gasped, ‘Save yourself!”

“And then, just as Clarke was reaching to catch her, the Major’s lifeless body tumbled to the ground.” Bellamy’s voice had dropped, quiet and full of regret, like stones falling to the bottom of a reservoir.

Raven looked at Clarke. Her face was no longer rosy. It was pale like snow, gleaming icily in the deepening evening light, and her normally bright eyes were dark with pain and remembered horror. Raven was glad to see that Abby already had her arm around her daughter’s rigid shoulders, offering wordless support that Raven was too far away to give.

“Clarke fell to her knees,” Bellamy stretched out his own hands, “and was reaching for the Major, when she heard Quint in the distance. He’d found her again. Clarke grabbed the Major’s gun, and then ran on.”

“Quint caught up with her in no time, of course. He knew the woods and Clarke did not. He was born to this land, and Clarke," Bellamy turned to the crowd, finding the Azgedan who'd commented before, "Clarke was born in space.”

“He tackled Clarke, dragging her to the ground, and then he pulled his knife and was preparing to thrust it home in Clarke’s chest, killing her in an instant and destroying any hope of rescue for those inside Mt. Weather, when he screamed in pain, dropping his weapon and clutching his wrist,” Bellamy’s voice rose with the tension of the story, clutching at his own wrist, bending forward in surprise and shock from an imaginary injury.

“Commander Lexa and her man had been tracking Quint, fearing for Clarke’s safety in the woods. Lexa herself had thrown the blade that dropped her war chief in his tracks.”

“When Lexa and her warrior reached Clarke, Lexa pulled her knife from Quint’s arm and offered it to Clarke. ‘His life is yours, now,’ she said, and waited for Clarke to take the blade.”

Raven risked another look at Clarke, and saw that now her friend’s expression had turned defiant, and a bit of color had returned to her face. Her gaze, though, hadn’t strayed from Bellamy.

“But before Clarke could move or think, they heard a roar,” Bellamy dropped his own already deep voice, allowing a rougher edge to creep in as he reached this portion of the story, “a deep-throated scream of rage and challenge, a sound unlike any Clarke had ever heard or even imagined, up on the Ark. The howling cry of an ancient predator, racing to attack the intruders in his territory.”

“And then the very ground around them began to shake. Pounding footsteps echoed across the forest floor. The trees themselves trembled, their leaves shaking, birds flying free and shrieking their dismay, twigs bouncing along the ground!” Bellamy’s voice rose and his words sped up, tumbling over each other in haste, mimicking the rising panic in the woods.

“Then the trees began to topple over, ripped from their roots as the great beast tore his way through the undergrowth. Woken from the spell, Lexa cried,” Bellamy paused for an infinitesimal second, and then with his voice full of terror, gasped out a nearly breathless, “ _Pauna!_ ”

The crowd, even knowing this was coming, gasped in enthralled surprise.

Raven risked a glance at Brandon and Larkin, who were sitting back, arms crossed, clearly waiting to be impressed. And making no secret of the fact that they were not, yet, impressed. 

“In a flash, Lexa reached for her blade,” Bellamy mimed the motion, “jerked it from her back and then with a single blow,” his own hands holding an imaginary hilt swung through the air, “hamstrung her traitorous general, dropping him to the ground with a bellow of pain.”

“Then Lexa screamed, “ ** _Run_**!”

Sitting on the other side of Roan, Ivon actually sat back, his face open wide with shock.

Roan himself leaned his head closer to Raven’s to whisper, “Is that part true? Or Bellamy’s invention.”

“True, as far as I know,” Raven whispered back. “Lexa saved Clarke from Quint’s knife.”

“And Lexa hamstrung him for betraying her, and left him for the puana?”

“Yeah. They found his body parts not far from Byrne’s”

“Huh.” Roan, sat back, his expression full of surprised approval.

“What?”

“Lexa never told me that part.”

“That she murdered her traitorous war chief by pauna? It’s how I got the idea.”

Roan nodded thoughtfully, and then offered her another quicksilver grin and sketched a bow with his head. “My respect for you continues to rise.”

“Hush!” Ivon whispered loudly, leaning around Roan to glare at them both. “I want to hear the story.”

Raven refocused on Bellamy’s voice, rejoining the story just as he was saying, “Clarke and Lexa could still hear the puana roaring behind them as they fled. Screaming in triumph before it tore at the bodies they’d left in its path. But they didn’t stop and they didn’t turn. They ran and ran and ran, following the fastest path their feet could find in the forest.”

“That path. They should have known,” he told the crowd, his expression and voice full of despair. “They should have wondered.” 

Bellamy opened his own eyes wide and held out his palms in the classic pose of confusion. Then he shook his head and reached for his beer, taking a healthy swallow and wiping his mouth along his arm before he set it down again to resume his tale. 

Raven didn’t look around this time, because she already knew what audiences looked like when they watched Bellamy flex his muscles, and it was old news.

Roan must have, though, because the sound he made wasn’t quite a chuckle, but it was amused all the same. “Look at Brandon’s second,” he said, his voice nearly inaudible. 

Raven glanced in that direction, and immediately realized why Roan had noticed him. Poor guy looked like he was going to start drooling any second. Somehow something that was merely inane in her fellow Arkers was much funnier in some poor Azgedan kid. Especially one who liked to say spiteful, nasty things about her. 

‘ _Drool on, asshole,_ ’ she thought as she looked at his at his avid face, ‘ _you’re never, ever gonna get a taste of that._ ’

Bellamy sat back to continue the story, opening his hands wide to indicate the helpless accuracy of hindsight. “But they didn’t wonder, and they didn’t know. They were too focused on running away as fast as their feet could carry them.”

Raven snuck another quick glance at Clarke. She looked as rapt as any member of the audience, hanging on every word as though it were a stranger’s story. 

Maybe now, told like this, to her it was a stranger’s story.

“Just as Clarke was convinced that they would never find safety in time, she spotted an old storm drain, rusted cover hanging loose on its broken hinges. ‘This way!’ she called, dashing for safety. They pulled away the cover and slipped into the tunnel, letting the cover slip back behind them.”

“Their feet carried them down that treacherous passage as fast as they could run, straight….” he flung out his arms, “into the heart of the great pauna’s lair.”

The crowd cried out ‘nooo!’ on cue, and Abby actually flinched back, her eyes wide as she turned to look at Clarke in wonder. Clarke ducked her head and Raven could swear she muttered, “Mom! I’m fine.”

Raven realized that Clarke must have never told her mother the unabridged version.

Brandon, sitting behind and to the side of Abby and Clarke with his arms still crossed defensively over his chest, actually chuckled, shaking his head at the foolishness Bellamy had just described. On the other hand, he was clearly now hanging on Bellamy’s every word, just like everyone else in the audience.

Larkin, her head tilted to one side, was listening more thoughtfully. Raven made a note to point that out to Roan later.

“They had just stumbled into an open area,” Bellamy was saying, “one full of tumbled granite blocks and trailing vines and falling water. An old amphitheater, built for the crowds to come and gawk at the caged animals. High up on a wall, Clarke could still make out the ancient letters naming the place. It had once been, a long time ago, the ‘National Zoo’.

“Only the great, great, great grandchildren of the zoo animals are caged no more. Before Clarke and Lexa could catch their breath, take in the full horror of all the shredded bodies of the pauna’s prey scattered about his feeding grounds, the moose, the lion, the panther, and the deer, the pauna itself appeared from above. He leapt at them, soaring through the air with a wild scream. He landed on Lexa’s warrior, downing him with a single strike of his mammoth arm, smashing his fists into the warriors chest. Then with a tremendous sweep, the pauna tossed the boy into the wall, and Clarke and Lexa heard his spine snap.

“The pauna turned to face them, beating its great chest in triumph, bellowing to the sky. His pelt was thick and black, his hands and feet leathery and strong, and his huge yellowed teeth were exposed by his screams. His eyes, in his huge wrinkled face, were small and orange with hate. 

“Clarke raised Major Byrne’s handgun and fired directly into the pauna. The single shot barely slowed him, so Clarke fired again and again, hitting the great beast a half dozen times.”

Bellamy had his hands up in the air, holding an imaginary gun, firing over and over, the imaginary recoil shaking his arms.

“The force of the bullets rocked the pauna backwards, off his feet, he stumbled to the edge of the platform and then fell into the pit below.”

“Lexa and Clarke leaned forward to see if the pauna was gone for good, when,” Bellamy jerked backward, “the pauna reared back over the edge, clambering back to their position. Clarke and Lexa turned and ran, seeking a sanctuary, a place to hide. Leaping over a barrier and down into another enclosure with what looked like an exit, Clarke made the jump successfully. But the Commander lost her footing as she landed and fell hard, wrenching her shoulder. Clarke ran back and dragged her to her feet. Together they scrambled over the fallen rocks, Clarke tugging Lexa behind her as they reached the narrow opening, it’s ancient hanging door still in place. 

“Clarke ducked through, but before Lexa could make it safety, the pauna caught them. Caught the Commander by the foot and began to drag her away.”

“Flee! yelled Lexa, Save yourself!”

“But Clarke raised her gun and emptied the rest of the magazine straight towards the pauna’s face. The pauna fell back, and Clarke dragged Lexa through the door, kicking it closed behind them.”

Raven knew this story, had heard it told more than once, but her own heart was beating hard in her chest now, hammering in response to Bellamy’s words.

“Clarke and Lexa dashed forward and passed through one more set of doors, this one they barred behind them by Lexa’s blade. They were trapped, caught in a dead end, and they saw no way out, but for the moment the ancient metal doors were holding. For the moment, they were safe. They could bind up their wounds, and hope for the best.”

“Their position didn’t remain hidden for long, and as the twilight shadows deepened, the pauna found them. With another great roar, he began to beat the door down, his great blows echoing throughout the amphitheater, the ancient metal ringing and denting from the force of his fists.” 

“Commander Lexa told Clarke that they should prepare to die, and that the spirit of the commander would live on. But Clarkd shook her head. She stood up and brushed off her hands.” Bellamy’s voice firmed up and he brushed off his own hands as he spoke. “She told Lexa that she didn’t fall to the ground to be eaten for dinner, and that they would find another way.”

The audience cheered. 

Clarke looked mildly nauseous. Abby looked fiercely proud. Brandon looked pissed off. Larkin still looked thoughtful.

“The last door was bending to the pauna’s great blows, when Clarke told Lexa her plan. They would have one chance, and just one, to escape. Then she gestured for Lexa to take her position to one side of the doorway, and, after taking on last deep breath, Clarke jerked open the door.” Bellamy pulled his own arms back, rocking with the imagined force of Clarke’s frantic yank.

“The pauna roared through.” 

“Clarke dashed out the other way, pulling Lexa behind her, and together they slammed the door shut and sealed the latch. And then they turned as one and ran as far as they could go, putting as much distance between themselves and the pauna as they could, until at last they could run no further.”

Raven risked another glance. Clarke was listening intently now, leaning forward, her breathing visibly quickening, her mouth slightly open, her eyes glassy with memories.

Bellamy let the silence hold, and hold, and hold to the very breaking point, and then he said, “And that is how Clarke Griffin of Arkadia defeated the pauna to save the life of Lexa Kom Trikru.”

The audience erupted in cheers and applause and hoots and whistles and stamping feet. Raven couldn’t help her grin as she glanced around the fire, looking at all the excited faces lit gold by the leaping flames.

Full night had crept over them as Bellamy spoke, and someone must have tended the fire.

Raven let her gaze finally fall on Brandon and Larkin, and a cold finger of doubt drifted down her neck. They looked contemptuous and proud, certain that the story was an exaggeration, a joke, and not yet believing it was entirely real.

Shaking his leg to get his attention, she turned to Roan, who had his head close together with Ivon as they talked quietly. “Kiss me,” she said as soon as he was looking at her. “Thoroughly. Make a really good job of it. I’ll play along.” 

“You will, will you?” he said, more amused and confused than anything else.

“Yes! If you really put your all into it. Convince the crowd, that sort of thing.”

“Convince them of …what?” he asked.

“How much you like me, of course!” she snapped, tilting her head toward Brandon and irritated at how slow on the uptake Roan was being.

“Oh,” he grinned at her, understanding flaring in his eyes. At last. “That.” 

He reached up to brush her hair away from her cheek with the back of his knuckles, drawing his fingers down to catch her chin with his thumb, his eyes on hers the whole time. Then he tilted his head to kiss her – his lips soft, his beard faintly ticklish, once, twice, his hand slipping around the back of her neck, a third time. 

When he kissed her a fourth time, her lips were already open to meet him. 

Her world slowed down to the feel of his mouth on hers, of his hand working up into her hair. He tasted of beer, and cooked meat, and a sweetness she associated only with him.

She wrapped her own fingers around his wrist, pulling herself closer, holding herself steady, keeping herself from climbing right on into his lap. Her heart was pounding so hard from the effort of balancing precariously on the bubble of excitement at the exhibitionism, and horror at it at the same time, she half wondered if anyone around her could hear it. 

When they pulled reluctantly apart a few seconds later it was slow, leaving their foreheads touching until last. His smile was soft and happy and she impulsively reached for his jaw and pulled him down to kiss him briefly one more time. 

The next time they broke apart, she sat all the way back, and with her eyes on his, asked, “Did they take the bait?”

Ivon leaned around Roan, and covered by the general noise of the crowd around them, said in a very dry tone, “Success. Brandon’s swallowed the lure so deep he’s going to shit blood trying to expel it.”

Raven cast her eyes over that way and had to look back at Roan again so her gloating smile would seem to be about him. Brandon did look like he had needles in his gut, his face was so pinched and angry. Larkin, meanwhile, looked to Raven as though she were trying to set them on fire with her mind. 

Raven looked at the two men, “How will we know for sure?”

Roan chuckled quietly, “They’re about to make their move.”

Raven settled back into Roan’s shoulder and looked openly around circle again, comfortably aware of the way Roan’s fingers were beginning to dip below the waistband of her trousers, brushing lightly along the skin of her hip. Now she found Bellamy, standing out on the edge with Clarke, Kane and Abby just behind them. Kane was frowning as Nathan and David Miller drew their heads close to his for a serious-looking chat. 

The first wave of happy chatter was finally fading when Brandon rose to his feet and called out, “Azgeda can take this pauna! We hunt the dire wolves and the grizzly bear, the wild boar and the mountain lions. Where the Wanheda merely escaped, we can eliminate the beasts from the woods.” He turned to face Roan directly, “We can do this, Your Majesty! Just give us the word!”

“Done,” Roan murmured, his lips hardly moving. Then he called out, “Rabbits make full bellies, but are dull prey. This pauna seems like a worthy target for Azgedakru. Keep our skills sharp.”

Brandon grinned triumphantly as his supporters cheered into the sudden quiet. 

Skaikru were silent for a beat, completely unsure of what to make of this development, and then Jasper let rip with a bellowed, “Yee haw!” 

With that, the crowd began to cheer, too.

Raven sought out Clarke, who was pale again in the firelight, and staring at Bellamy across the fire. Bellamy was looking right back at her, but his expression was impossible to read.

It was only then, as her eyes travelled around the circle, that Raven realized that many of Roan’s traitors were glaring hard, not at Roan, but at Clarke, their fixed grins fierce with triumph, their eyes glowing with something that looked a hell of a lot like hate.

Raven’s heart shrank painfully inside her chest. The reminder was stark. They were trying to kill Roan because of Skaikru. If Roan had left Skaikru out in the cold, if he’d sanctioned an attack, they’d love him. Skaikru was their target, Roan himself nothing but an impediment in their true course. 

And Raven understood that whatever her personal feelings in the matter might be, Roan kom Azgeda must be kept alive at all costs. For without the king on their side, Skaikru was likely to lose far more than they could afford to give.


	4. Chapter 4

Buffeted on all sides by people coming at her, mouths open wide to shout, to gloat, to exult, Clarke actually began to feel lightheaded. It was as though the people around her were sucking up all the available air to push it back out as sound. They also had questions. So many questions. _How much was really true? Was the pauna really that big? Had Lexa really been afraid? Had that poor warrior died immediately?_

Clarke fought the impulse to put her hands over her ears and bury her face in her mother’s shoulder.

Abby wrapped her arm around Clarke and pulled her to her feet, laughing as she said to those nearest, “We’re causing a bit of a stir! Perhaps we should get out of the way before the next performer?”

When the people closest to them immediately fell back, Clarke was strongly tempted to dash down the open path, and then keep right on running. Somewhere.

Which was a ridiculous thought and she knew it as soon as it occurred to her. So she walked out clinging to her mom’s hand, letting Abby lead the way. The urge to run faded with every step out of the noise, and by the time they’d reached the outer edge of the seating area around the fire-pit, Clarke felt much more herself again.

“That was really… something!” her mom said, turning to look at her. “You never told me all those details. Or described the pauna so thoroughly!”

“To be honest, I don’t think I even told Bellamy all of those details! He pulled them out of the story I told him, I guess.”

“Dramatic license?” Her mom titled her head, her eyes bright and a broad smile on her face.

“Oh, no,” Clarke exclaimed quietly, shaking her head helplessly back at her, “what he described, that was as close to what I remember as you could put into words. Like he was there himself, watching over my shoulder or something. I know I didn’t tell it to him like that. I told it all in a mess, remembering things out of order, trying to keep it all true and exact. He pulled it all together, turned it into art, not me.” 

And then Clarke abruptly stopped talking, dropping her eyes. She had just realized, one, that she was babbling, and two, that her mother was giving her the most delighted smirk of ‘I know how much you like him’ she’d seen since she was thirteen and was telling Abby, at length, about the teaching assistant in her advanced cell biology lab. A brilliant and beautiful young woman named Naomi, about five years older than Clarke. 

Clarke had crushed on her quietly, from afar, for years.

And then she’d quietly grieved for her, after she’d learned that Naomi died in the air-loss after Diana Sydney stole the Exodus Ship. 

“So? How was it?” 

Clarke looked up to see that Bellamy and Kane had reached them. She answered Bellamy’s question with a broad grin. “You were great. I knew you would be.” Then she remembered the plan. “Do you think it worked?”

“Not sure yet,” Kane replied. 

Clarke slid her eyes across the circle, not wanting to turn her head to stare. It took her a moment to find Roan’s two chief suspects, and when she did, they were glaring hard at something else. 

Clarke followed their gaze, and saw Roan, King of Azgeda, sitting in the front row of benches and lit up by the full force of the evening bonfire. While Raven Reyes, chief mechanic of Arkadia, unrestrained critic of all things grounder, was very nearly in his lap as they kissed deeply in full view of Arkadia and Azgeda alike.

For a love affair no one but the principals had even known about a week ago, this was moving very, very fast. 

Clarke frowned, wondering if it was entirely wise to for them to be so very demonstrative. It wasn’t just Azgedans who would have objections. Plenty of Arkers were not going to be impressed by Raven’s choice either.

She was turning to say something just like that to Bellamy, when she caught Brandon’s voice, issuing his challenge.

After that things moved fast. Roan, holding Raven’s hand firmly in his, met Brandon at the edge of the fire, and they all came straight for Kane. Roan’s request for assistance to plan out a hunting expedition barely waited until they were within hailing distance.

Kane herded the whole party into the mess, and by the time they arrived, they’d swelled to quite a large group. Not only were Roan and all his Azgedans present, so were many of the best hunters of Arkadia, a random assortment of Ark Guards, plus a handful of general curiosity seekers, Jasper Jordan loud among them. 

Tables were dragged together and the debate over the best means of assault on the pauna enclosure began.

Clarke tried to leave, begging off with words about her own poor hunting skills, but Roan stopped her cold. 

“I could have sworn I saw you trading panther pelts, up in the woods? Or was that just rabbits?” he said, a light in his eye that promised the full story would spill out of him at a moment’s hesitation on her part. The truth of which he knew because he’d pried it out of her during their very long and tedious walk to Polis after her shoulder wound had opened back up again and blood started seeping through her clothes. 

Clarke smiled grimly and allowed as how she’d be happy to tell them all she remembered from the pauna’s feeding grounds. “And it was rabbits,” she added, just in case anyone had been paying attention to him too closely. “I caught them in snares.”

She dared a glance at Bellamy’s face, and she knew immediately from his concerned expression that he had indeed heard the first part of Roan’s question. Because of course he had.

She was not ready to talk to Bellamy about those three months, not yet. Only it now dawned on her, if and when they ever did get naked together, it would take him all of ten seconds to locate the very obvious claw scars on her shoulder and then that whole story plus all the rest of the foolish, risky things she’d done to make it through the winter... and she brought herself up hard. That day wasn’t this one, and didn’t seem imminent at all, so she wouldn’t borrow that trouble right now. 

Kane was calling for maps, and Roan’s second was asking for paper so Clarke could draw the enclosure at the zoo. The next hour disappeared in a blur of questions, suggestions, and discarded ideas.

Clarke was fully alive to the performance of all it. Roan had spent days observing the paunas at the old zoo. While he wasn’t nearly as good an artist as she was – his cartographic sketches were perhaps more informative for being less impressionistic – he knew exactly what it looked like, and far better than Clarke herself did. All her memories were shaded by panic and pain and fear. And Lexa.

As a result, Roan and Ivon already had a fairly solid plan in place. 

But Roan wasn’t sharing this private scouting trip with his squad of Azgedans, wasn’t tipping them off to even the possibility of a hidden agenda based on his own knowledge of the terrain.

For Clarke, it was a fascinating experience to simply listen and observe. Roan and his Azgedans had been raised on Earth, and were accustomed to taking out large dangerous game with arrows and spears alone. They were clearly delighted to throw themselves into planning for something for which their knowledge and skills were valuable and useful, laughing, teasing, and talking over each other as they compared old hunts to this new one. She felt as though a window into their world had briefly opened, and she could catch a rare glimpse of their lives away from war, see they weren't always the dour, glowering warriors she'd mostly known them to be. 

She’d already been aware that Azgedakru had never had the same level of technophobia as Trikru. None of the other clans had, really. Most them had kept what tech they could adapt and maintain working as best they could, from Luna’s and Emori’s boats to wind turbines, blast furnaces, and internal plumbing.

As a result, Roan’s guards had no reluctance at all in incorporating into their planning a full spread of maps, including an old tourist map of the zoo itself, satellite and drone photos, and even old zoological data on lowland gorillas Raven pulled up on the Ark’s computers.

Their interest in utilizing technological aids didn’t end there, either. Brandon and Ivon even hinted about borrowing guns, hints that were aggressively ignored by Kane and Colonel Miller. 

Roan, already knowing guns weren’t on offer, stepped in before any request (and refusal) could get too specific and said, with a pride that rapidly tipped over into arrogance, “Azgedakru are the most skilled hunters in the whole of the coalition. We have tracked and killed worse than these creatures with nothing but our bows and our spears and our wits. We need no more than these weapons now.”

Clarke caught Bellamy’s eye, and they shared a quick moment of mordant admiration for Roan’s well-timed attack of bravado.

Ivon and Brandon, the two senior members of the kings honor guard responded with hearty, “Hear, hears!” and the rest followed on a half a beat later. Though one or two, Clarke thought, looked ever so slightly worried, casting dubious glances back towards the old pictures of gorillas scattered about the table.

At which point Raven cleared her throat. “What about using tech to find the paunas, pinpoint their locale exactly before you begin?”

Once the whole group was staring at her, she shrugged. “I’m not a hunter, but with the right drone tied into my tablets, I could track heat signatures. Tell you where exactly in the zoo to find them. I’d have to come with you, of course, but that can be managed I’m sure.”

There was a collective indrawn breath, and then enthusiastic voices rose from every direction.

Clarke fell back then, drifting to the edge of the small crowd, knowing that the trap was all set and there was nothing more she needed to do.

From her new vantage point, she could watch all the faces around the table, as though she were attending a play. Raven was frowning as she explained something to Ivon, gesturing impatiently in the air as she struggled to describe what Clarke guessed was a drone, and what it could do. Roan was standing slightly back and watching Raven with what looked a hell of a lot like pride on his face. 

Bellamy and Kane both looked worried, and Colonel Miller, too, but then they always looked worried and tired these days. Clarke hated seeing how it was marking Bellamy’s face, the frown lines were in danger of becoming permanent and the hollows under his eyes adding years to his countenance. 

The Ark hunters had their heads close together with various members of Roan’s squad, comparing notes and strategies.

But Brandon was quiet again. Like Clarke, he’d fallen back a bit and was observing the crowd, flicking his eyes back again and again to Raven and Roan, now standing so close together as they bent over maps that their shoulders brushed. And the would-be assassin’s dark eyes burned with malevolent satisfaction. 

~~~~

Raven looked up from fastening the straps on her brace when she heard a firm tapping at the doorframe. It was accompanied by a muffled “Hello?” 

Mildly curious to see who had made the long trek up to visit her, Raven called out, “Come in. Door’s open.”

Clarke pushed her way through. 

Raven would have been less startled to see Marcus Kane himself at her bedroom door.

“Clarke?”

This was the first time Raven could remember Clarke seeking her out in her sleeping quarters since they’d all returned to Arkadia after ALIE. Or really, ever, except during those brief, frantic weeks at the drop ship.

They were friends, of course. And they worked really well together, and Raven was pretty sure that Clarke valued their relationship as much as she did. 

But there was a reserve between them, an awareness that there were subjects they’d never dared raise with each other. Why Clarke had vanished. Or stayed in Polis when she finally resurfaced. Why Raven accepted the ALIE chip. 

Then there were those people who lives and deaths loomed large between them, unacknowledged but present all the same. Gina. Sinclair. Finn. Lexa.

And finally, there was that quiet little voice that sometimes echoed in Raven's head. That little voice asked that questions she wasn't really sure she wanted the answers to, lying restlessly in bed in the darkest parts of really sleepless nights, when pain made it impossible to find any comfortable position. _Why would Clarke so regret her choice at Mount Weather? The choice that had saved Raven’s life? That had saved her mother’s life, and Miller’s and Monty’s and Harper’s and Wick’s lives? Had saved all of their lives?_

 _Did Clarke,_ Raven wondered in the darkest, coldest hours of the night, _maybe feel the tradeoff hadn't been worth it after all?_

So, all things considered, Raven was surprised to see Clarke at her door.

“Yeah. Hey,” Clarke opened with a wide smile, “I’d expected to see you in the mess before now, so I thought I’d stop by. Make sure you’re still okay for today? Leg not bothering you too much?”

Raven turned her attention back to her brace. Clarke in junior doctor mode was not one of her favorite versions of Clarke. Raven wasn’t big on doctors, any doctors, even though she knew she owed them her life. Clarke only pretending to be in junior doctor mode when she was really in nose-in-everyone-else’s-business mode was infinitely worse.

“Yeah,” Raven said, the air whooshing out of her lungs as she bent nearly double over her lap to tug at the straps above her boot one more time. “Everything’s good. I don’t get many chances to sleep in a little, so this morning I took one.”

“I’m not late,” she added defensively, sitting up and frowning at Clarke once she’d finished rechecking all the fastenings.

“No, no!” Clarke hastened to assure her. “You’re not late, and I’m glad you slept in! Rest is good!”

Raven cocked her head. “Why are you really here? Your mom send you?”

“No!”

Raven raised her brows and waited.

Clarke shrugged, a faint grin playing at the corners of her mouth, “Mom worries about you. She may have mentioned it. But I came on my own. Truly.” 

Her expression grew earnest and concerned, her voice taking on the throaty purr Raven had noticed she fell into when she was feeling especially passionate about something, and she stepped closer as she spoke, “I wanted to let you know. You can back out. Even now. Everyone would understand. Maybe even be relieved. You’re vital and irreplaceable, Raven, and as much faith as you have in Roan, everything could go wrong. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time. So I could take your place. Offer to help out based on my previous experience with the pauna.” She shrugged self-deprecatingly, “killing me will appeal to Brandon, too. He’ll still take the bait.”

Raven had been fine. Great even. She’d woken up alone in her nest of furs, warm and toasty and with a smile on her lips, smug with the sense of a well-earned rest and both nervous and excited about the day’s adventure. The early-morning sun was spilling through the narrow window, the promise of summer heat in the long dusty yellow path it cast on the metal floor. She’d stretched and rolled with the ease of muscles well lubricated by pre-dawn sex, before Roan had kissed her soundly and then slipped out the door, off on preparations of his own.

As she looked at Clarke’s expression, barely masking her need to step into the middle of whatever was going on and take charge of it herself, Raven’s sunny mood evaporated and frustration surged into its place. 

Clarke Griffin, of all people, should know not to question what Raven said she could or couldn’t do, and Raven had said quite clearly and loudly and more than once that she could handle today. That it was a relief to have a concrete problem to tackle, and one that would be finished by the time the sun went down. 

And, too, just this once, Raven had thought silently and to herself, deep in her heart of hearts, _just this one time_ , before everything finally went irretrievably to shit, she really wanted be the one who got to have the daring adventure with the handsome boy. It was her turn, damn it.

She’d trusted Clarke to have her back, not come in ready to take over.

But Raven forced a cheerful smile anyway. Too much experience with doctors – and other concerned parties – had taught her this was the best approach to getting everyone to back off. 

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve got this. It’s a beautiful day, and it’s good to get outside while we still can. You and your mom both tell me that all the time. And it’s not just Roan I have faith in, or Ivon. I have faith in myself, too.” She decided she’d let her voice grow maybe a little too tart on that last comment. So pushing herself to her feet, she said more cheerily, “Come on. Help me straighten up the bed and I’ll be ready to head out that much sooner. It’ll be easier with two people.”

Clarke joined her immediately, stepping briskly around to the far side of the generous mattress and reaching for the bedding. Then, with her fingers buried in the thick pile of the topmost fur, she paused and said, “Oh. Wow.” 

She looked back up at Raven, her hands moving almost of their own accord to stroke the soft pelts. “These are nice. Really, really nice.” She looked down curiously at the fur she was pulling through her fingers. “Nicest ones I’ve ever seen. Or felt.”

“Yeah,” Raven agreed with a proprietary smile and a loving pat of her own, “they are nice. That’s mink, this one’s fox,” she supplied helpfully, and then she nearly winced at the sound of smug pleasure in her own voice. 

Feeling the heat of embarrassment rise in her face, Raven added, with all the rough nonchalance as she could muster, “I mean, I had to blow a guy a couple of times to get ‘em, but it was totally worth it.”

The other side of the bedding stopped moving.

Raven glanced up to see Clarke, her frozen expression a study in anxious dismay. “Raven?” Clarke asked.

Guilt and exasperation in equal measure abraded her already tender nerves. Raven exclaimed with irritation, “Oh my God, Clarke. It was just a stupid joke, left over from the Ark.”

Now Clarke merely looked blank.

Raven shook her head, remembering again just how different they used to be. They’d been daughters of two different worlds, despite sharing the same stale Ark air. “From Mecha,” she explained more calmly. “Just a dumb thing. ‘Who’d you have to blow to get that?’ We used to say it about anything nice.” 

Or vital. Or illegal. And when Raven had said that to her own mother, in the worst times before her death, she hadn’t been kidding and it hadn’t been a joke.

“Oh!” Clarke’s chuckle sounded deeply relieved. “Of course. I mean… you do think Roan is a good guy. Right?”

“He’s definitely a good guy,” Raven assured her as firmly as she could. “And,” she winked broadly, “he strips down really well, too.”

Clarke was smirking in relief at her now, “Yeah, I’ve definitely noticed that,” then she paused to make a regretful little moue, “though every time I’ve seen him without a shirt he’s generally been bleeding all over something.”

“I guess I’ve been lucky. No blood so far,” Raven laughed. Then the uncomfortable thought occurred to her that today could be the day that her luck changed for the worse. 

“Anyway,” she turned back to the previous subject, unwilling to risk the bad karma of allowing that thought make it out into words, “You really thought I’d put myself on the line like this just to snag some furs from some guy?”

“No! But…” Clarke cleared her throat and ducked hastily to smooth the last of the blankets on her side, pausing to stroke the soft fur one more time before pulling her hands away to wipe them on her trousers. “I know you still have a lot of doubts about working so closely with the clans, with grounders, after everything that’s happened, so…” 

Clarke trailed off awkwardly, their unnamed ghosts hovering oppressively close in the space between them. Raven’s own screams of panic and pain echoed soundlessly down the months since she was tied to a post and sliced up for the amusement and blood lust of people who wanted nothing more than the eradication of her and all her kind. People who even now were swelling the ranks of an anti-tech cult that would happily attempt to kill her all over again if they knew what she was doing as she tried to save as many as she could.

Raven rocked back on her heels and folded her arms across her chest. “So _what_ , Clarke?” she asked.

Clarke raised her stubborn chin. “I think Roan likes you,” she gave Raven a meaningful waggle of her eyebrows, dropping her voice and letting a little huskiness slink in, “Personally. A lot. So it crossed my mind that it might be complicated, politically, if he thought you were just… trading for stuff.” 

So many hot retorts rushed through Raven’s brain that she couldn’t quite get any of them out. Which, after half a second she realized was a really good thing. None of them would have been very _political._

“I know he’s important,” she said instead, her adrenaline surging even while she strove to keep her tone even. “And I know how much he matters, which is why I agreed to help him with this in the first place.” 

Then she turned away to collect her jacket and her sticks. Not that she needed either yet, but she’d learned the hard way it was better to be prepared. And she just might need to be prepared to beat Clarke Griffin about the head and shoulders, if she ever even hinted at implying Raven was a whore again. Even if Raven had been the one to plant the idea by running her own stupid mouth ahead of her brain. Forgetting that princesses from Alpha had never even had to joke about trading sex for survival, or about having something nice to call their very own.

“Raven?” Clarke met her at the door, her expression earnestly sincere. “You know it’s okay if it’s more than that, right? If you’re helping him because you like him, too?”

Raven gawked at Clarke, unable to believe she’d really heard that, and then she started to laugh because it was just too ridiculous. “Did you really just give me permission to _like_ the guy I’m actually, you know, sleeping with? Spying for? Helping to protect while he leads a group of trigger-happy hunters into the great pauna’s den?”

Clarke wrinkled her nose and grimaced in embarrassment. “Okay. Yes. Fine. You like him, too, and you don’t need permission to do that. Though,” she glanced back at the bed, and with a droll voice, obviously trying to get into the spirit of the thing, said, “the furs are definitely a nice bonus.”

Raven snickered, reaching to haul open the heavy door. “Just so we are completely clear, I didn’t ask for them.” Because she hadn’t known she could, which was neither here nor there really. “The first time I stayed here I had a bad night. Cold makes the pain worse and I didn’t sleep well. He noticed.” 

“He would notice,” said Clarke, her voice warm with approval.

Raven ignored Clarke’s interruption, and her approval. Roan kept his kindness private because it was between the two of them, and had nothing to do with anyone or anything else. “He saw a problem that was easy for him to fix, and he fixed it. I was cold. He gave me warm blankets. That’s it. Nothing more than that.”

Clarke was looking over at her with a positively maternal gleam in her eyes, and Raven was taken aback by how much she could see of Abby in her daughter’s face, which wasn’t something she’d ever really noticed before. 

“I think he’s given you some happiness in a dark time, and I’m glad. No one deserves that more than you,” Clarke replied. “And Raven?” she reached out and touched Raven’s arm, her fingers light.

Raven slowed her steps and turned to face her. 

Clarke’s eyes were clear and a tiny bit desperate as she declared in a rush, “If he ever does make you NOT happy, I’ll choose you first. Always.”

At a loss for words, Raven settled for bumping Clarke’s shoulder with her own as they walked down the corridor. “Come on, Griffin. Step it up or we really will be late.”

Clarke chuckled obediently, and Raven brought up a supply issue she was facing, and they made it the rest of the way to the mess and then the garage without talking about Roan Kom Azgeda. 

As soon as they entered the garage, of course, the brief moratorium ended. Roan himself was there, along with Ivon and Brandon, standing in a tense-looking huddle with Bellamy and Kane.

“What’s going on?” Clarke called out.

“Change of plans,” Nate Miller materialized seemingly out of nowhere. “Kane and your mom need the rover to take her and medical supplies to Doah. They had a mudslide after the rains last night and they need some help.”

“How bad was it?” Clarke asked. “Do I need to get my things, too?”

“One family dead, a bunch of others with broken arms and legs, nothing too bad among the survivors. But it was their healer’s family house that bought it. The heda radioed in at dawn. And, yeah, Jackson is looking for you, but I don’t know which of you is going.”

“So, no drugs then?” Raven looked at Nate. “Nothing from the restricted list?”

“No. Bandages, splints, salves, sutures, and someone who knows what they’re doing, mostly.” He smiled at her. “The radios Roan got them to accept worked though, so maybe the hedas down that way will decide we aren’t so bad after all. Maybe let us help them save their kids.”

“Even better when we show up with real help after a disaster,” Clarke added.

“Okay,” Raven nodded. That was all well and good, “But. What about today?”

“You get me!” Nate offered her a broad grin, “and the truck instead.”

“My stuff?” Raven narrowed her eyes at him, her heart picking up a bit of speed as she thought of her precious exploding arrows headed off in the wrong direction. “The drone and tablets? My gear bag? All of it?”

“Moved already,” he assured her. “Locked and stowed.”

“Hmmph,” Raven nodded, but kept her eyes on his. “Can the truck follow the same route as the rover?”

“Uh. No.”

She tipped her head towards the little knot that was breaking up, everyone looking dissatisfied. “So that’s what’s got them fussed.”

“Yeah. We can’t get you as close. You’ll have to walk or ride to get into position. Roan was pretty pissed about that.”

“I bet.”

Roan was headed straight for them by that point, and while he didn’t look angry at the moment, he definitely looked grim.

In the end the good news was they left only a quarter of an hour later than they had intended. 

The bad news included the last minute route change, the addition of a driver, and, to Raven’s private horror, Roan was now going to travel on horseback along with his guard instead of riding shotgun in the rover with her while she drove.

As they pulled out of Arkadia, Roan and Ivon leading the way with their troops, with Raven, Nate and the truck following behind, Raven kept telling herself that everything would be fine. Just fine. 

The shitty part was, she didn’t believe herself at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Raven glared out the front window of the truck, adjusting her grip on the grab bar over her head as they bounced over the remains of the old road.

“Are you sure we can’t go faster?” she demanded.

“I’m sure,” Nate ground out, just as the truck bumped across another washout, sending them both several inches into the air. “This is as fast as we get.”

The last of the group of riders they were following disappeared around the bend in ahead of them.

“Fuck.” Raven hissed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“I’m doing the best I can!”

Raven blew out a breath after they sailed over yet another bump in the road, “I know.”

She looked over at Nate, crouched grimly over the wheel, and reassured him, “I know you are. It’s not a straight road. It’s just,” her control slipped and she finished angrily, “they aren’t supposed to have a shot at him like this!”

“Well he’s in fucking charge, right? Why the fuck are they going so fast?” Nate snarled.

Raven scowled and didn’t answer. She’d been asking herself the same damn thing for the last hour. There was no reason for Roan to have chosen to set this pace.

Then she felt the momentum of the truck slow. “Nate? What the hell are you doing? We’re barely half way to the zoo!”

“Radio Arkadia and let Kane know. We’re slowing down because if we lose an axle we’re all dead. If they do take out your boyfriend early, their next step is to lay an ambush for us.”

Raven swallowed hard, and reached for the radio.

“Wait!” Nate cried, “Look!”

They’d swung around another curve, and ahead of them was the full group of riders, including Roan on his big black and white piebald. They were gathered in the center of the old track, circling around and staring and pointing down at something on the road.

While Nate was slowing to a stop, Roan and Ivon were dismounting and crouching down to examine more closely whatever it was.

By the time Raven had clambered down out of the truck and was halfway across the cracked pavement, the rest of the riders had pulled back to the verge and were dismounting as well. Now she could see what had caused the delay.

Bodies.

At least a half dozen human bodies, maybe more. All mangled and torn, and scattered in bits across the old roadway.

Raven swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat, squared her shoulders, and kept walking.

Roan stood up as she drew near. “Trishanakru,” he told her. “Ten, I think.”

“Ten?” Raven looked around, “There isn’t enough…” and trailed off.

“Ten,” he repeated, more firmly this time, crossing over to her and blocking her view. “I think they were taken by surprise by the acid rain a week ago.”

“But, acid rain…?” Raven couldn’t quite form the question.

“Paunas,” he replied. “They’re the only predator around who would rip up bodies like that – while they were still alive – and then carry some body parts away. There,” he pointed. “You can see their trail.”

Raven followed the direction of his finger. The ripped and trampled undergrowth clearly marked a path taken by something large. She turned her gaze back to him. “What now?”

“We split up. Some to follow that path, the rest to go directly to their feeding grounds. See if they’re still using them.”

“What about me and my gear? We can’t just drive the truck across….” she tilted her head in horror in the direction of the dead, nauseated at the thought.

“No. I think Miller should head back to report to Kane, see if they can contact Trishanakru. Report their dead. I’ll ride out with half of my warriors along the trail, you’ll go with Ivon and the other half directly to the zoo on the old roads, just as we planned.”

“My gear?”

“We’re traveling light today. The horses can take the load.”

Raven wanted desperately to ask if he was sure, if this was really a good idea. To remind him that he was the one who hadn’t wanted them to split up. But before she could think of a way to ask that didn’t give away their plans, he was striding off, issuing orders over his shoulder as he went.

Nate argued, of course. But she could tell from his face that he couldn’t come up with any way to go forward either. They didn’t have the time or the gear to bury the bodies. Driving over them was unthinkable.

In the end he sighed and gave in. However he pulled her aside as Roan’s troops were unloading her gear and divvying it up between them. Shoving his holstered pistol into her hands, he said, “Take this. Strap it on.”

Totally unprepared for this offer, Raven hesitated. She understood that the gun could be useful. But it could also make her a target. And she knew, from Bellamy’s vivid retelling of the tale the night before, that shots from a pistol didn’t easily kill paunas.

Nate reached down and folded his hands over hers. “You know how to use this, Raven. You’ve done the training.”

She nodded and took the weapon, reaching around under her jacket to attach it to her belt in the middle of her back. The most out of the way place she could think of if she was going to be on horseback. Nate checked the snaps, then patted her shoulder. “I know Wick’s got eyes on you. But, Raven?” Nate’s dark gaze bored into her’s. “Don’t wait for rescue. Shoot first if you have to.”

She knew he wasn’t talking about the paunas. She jerked her head in a quick nod.

A few minutes later Raven was hoisted up behind a slight woman named Alba. Her gear – all in heavy Ark duffle bags – was already strapped on behind the rest of the half-dozen riders heading out with Ivon.

She watched over her shoulder as Nate carefully negotiated turning the truck around in the narrow roadway, and then vanished around the bend. Raven assured herself she did not feel forlorn. How could she? He wasn’t even supposed to have been with them today.

Turning forward she recollected her manners. “Um, hi,” she said, to the back of the middle-aged woman’s head. “Thank you for the lift.”

“As my king orders,” Alba replied frostily and without bothering to turn or even glance at Raven.

That seemed a clear sign that conversation would be entirely unwelcome.

Raven settled herself for a long silent ride. Then, to her consternation, Ivon called out a command and spurred his horse back into the rocking three-beat gait they’d been following all morning.

After that she didn’t have any breath left to talk. Raven’s entire concentration was focused on staying on the horse. It was a tricky business. The riding fur was slippery, she was perched precariously on the back of the saddle seat underneath, and she couldn’t find anything to grab onto besides Alba’s bony hips.

Finally Alba turned her head to grunt, “Wrap your arms around my waist, skai gada, and hold onto your own wrists. I don’t want bruises on me.”

Once Raven was plastered fully to Alba’s back, she found it was easier to adapt her movement to the woman’s, and through her to the horse underneath them.

They thudded onward. The forest around them grew taller and denser, blocking out the sun. As the tree cover thickened, it cut off the air currents, until there was no breeze at all. Sweat rolled down Raven’s back, soaking her shirt where it rested between her skin and Nate’s pistol. Her hair clung damply to her forehead and her neck. She wondered again how the grounders survived the summer in so many layers of clothing. She was melting in half their clothing; they didn’t even seem to be aware of the heat.

The horses slowed to a walk some interminable time later (less than a hour on Raven’s watch once she finally had a chance to look). At last, Ivon pulled to a halt in a little vale, his raised arm bringing the rest of the riders circling to a halt around him for new instructions.

Raven was just glad she could let go her locked grip around Alba’s waist and settle back into her own body. Unsticking herself from the other woman’s back with what she hoped was an imperceptible sigh of relief.

“We’re here,” Ivon announced.

Raven swallowed back her disbelieving, ‘we are?’

“The old enclosure is just over that ridgeline.” Ivon pointed at the one fifteen meters or so ahead of them and to the left.

Raven turned her head to take in the shallow slopes that surrounded them. To her, these ridgelines looked exactly like all the other tree-covered ridges and vales they’d been riding through and over since they left the bodies behind. A gentle incline at the base rising abruptly to a narrow peak, slippery with old leaves and pine needles, everything drenched in the shadowless green light filtering down through the nearly impenetrable tree canopy.

Ivon appeared at her side. “Time for you to deploy your devices, Skaikru tekspeka.”

Raven fell gracelessly into Ivon’s outstretched arms, and then clung to him for balance while she waited for her leg to start communicating with her spine again.

“You okay, gada?” His voice betrayed just the slightest note of concern.

“I’m fine.” Raven straightened up and pointed out a small level spot with what she hoped was enough of an opening in the tree cover above to allow her drone to pass through. “Bring my gear over there.”

Once she had the drone in the air and transmitting back, Raven felt much better about their situation. She found the main zoo enclosure right over the ridgeline Ivon had pointed out, and she paused in what she was doing long enough to turn and say, “I’m impressed that you got us here without a wrong turn.”

Ivon’s wry smile was somehow both kind and cool. “I’ve been navigating this world all my life, tekspeka.”

Raven ducked her head, acknowledging the rebuke. “Right.”

“The maps helped a great deal,” he added, “and I know how to see the signs of the old roadbeds under the forest floor.”

Raven guided her drone in closer, though she hoped not so close it would disturb the gorillas. After a minute or two of fiddling with the controls, she grinned in satisfaction. One and then another and another bright orange hotspot bloomed on her screen. A deep yellow orange radiating from the core of their bodies and extending down their legs and out their arms, the rich hue fading rapidly through the spectrum from orange to yellow to green to blue, with the thinnest lines of purple demarcating the coolest outer edge of their bodies. The huge mammals blazed like beacons in the special lens on her camera.

“Paunas,” she murmured to her silent audience, delighted with herself and her equipment. “Five. Looks like one really big one. Probably the alpha. There,” she tapped the screen, “the….” she reached for the word from last night’s research, “the silverback, plus three smaller adults, and one little guy,” she added, pointing out each resting figure as she rotated the drone’s cameras.

The six Azgedans bent their heads so close to Raven’s they jostled her and each other in their attempts to view the screen. Raven felt nearly swallowed up by their oppressive closeness, even as she held up her arms to shield her equipment. Worried it would be knocked to the ground.

Ivon barked out, “Two at a time!”

Raven hoped her silent sigh of relief went unnoticed.

“Can you find our king?” Ivon asked curiously, after he and the rest had each taken their turns. Muttering quietly in amazement and interest at this demonstration of her tech.

Or disbelief. One older man, his carefully shaved Mohawk greying at the temples, coughed and spat at the ground. “It’ll be a trick,” he said to Ivon. In Trigedasleng. “I don’t believe in it.”

“I can try,” Raven told Ivon, ignoring the asshole and guiding her drone higher to start a standard sweep.

At first none of them saw anything large enough. The only orange blips on her screen were clearly too tiny to be anything other than squirrels or rabbits or birds or the like. Finally, about 200 degrees into the search, after she could feel the tension around her mounting, she spotted a large moving blip. From its vaguely ovoid shape to the sway in its movement, it could be nothing but a horse viewed from above.

Five more orange ovals followed in close order while Raven fussed with her controls, trying for a better view that would allow them to see more. She finally got an angle that allowed the shapes to resolve into horse-like objects, compressed legs and necks and noses appearing on the screen, rider-sized lumps with round heads growing out of their backs.

“Why are they the same color?” demanded the asshole.

“Nearly the same core body temperature,” Raven said. She pointed at the data box in the corner of the screen. “That’s what this camera picks up. Heat.”

The rider at the front of the little group on the screen pulled to a halt, raising his hand.

Raven was sure she felt the collective sigh of relief, brushing the still air across her skin. Her own shoulders sagged as she let go at least one set of worries.

A big, very dark-skinned young man, with a shaved head and startlingly green eyes, Raven thought his name was something like Sego or Swego, whispered gently, almost reverently, “The king.”

As they watched, the riders clustered around the central figure, around Roan, and some sort of conference seemed to be happening.

It occurred to Raven that they might not realize that they were just one ridge away from the gorillas. A hot rush of adrenaline began to flow through her veins. She desperately wished that Arkadia had enough hand radios to be lent out to hunting parties. But there were too few to share. She had no way to reach out to Roan and his squad.

She pulled the drone back to check on the great apes in their old home.

“Shit,” she hissed.

The adults were milling around now, circling the lead silverback, the smallest one riding the back of another, probably its mother Raven guessed.

Tension flowed back across Ivon’s little group as quickly as it had left a moment before.

As they watched, the group of gorillas broke apart. The three smaller ones scattered in different directions. The big orange alpha blob narrowed and the heat signature intensified. Raven realized he must have reared up on his hind legs, and then they all heard his roared challenge.

Then he moved, so fast it was hard to believe it was real. He was out of the screen before Raven could get her fingers working on the controls.

She had the alpha back in the frame as he flew towards the ridge in great leaps, headed straight for the clustered horses around Roan. She kept the camera on him as he soared over the ridge and bounded down the other side, heading straight for the horses and riders.

The horses startled and leapt sideways or reared up as the pauna charged them, their riders fighting to bring them back around to face their prey. Only the central figure, Roan she was sure because of the arm directions, managed to keep his mount under control. He alone was squared up to face the pauna by the time it hit the group.

The pauna promptly veered away from him to pounce on another still whirling horse and rider, dragging both down.

“Ivon!” Swego cried out. “We have to go to them!”

“Mount up!” Ivon yelled at almost the same moment. “Alba! You stay with Raven.”

“Sir!” she cried.

Ivon swung up on his horse, throwing over his shoulder an angry, “Your king tasked you with her safety. Your orders haven’t changed.”

Raven glared at him. Trying to gesture with her eyeballs at the still-closed bag with the exploding arrows, hinting that he should take it with them. Ivon didn’t even seem to see her. Then she recalled that he didn’t actually know what was in that bag. For all he knew, Roan was already carrying them.

Her signal went unnoticed. Her panic feathered up another notch.

Ivon and four more riders headed for the far ridgeline, leaving Raven alone with Alba. The Azgeda, clearly disgusted at her babysitting job, crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Raven, her entire body radiating contempt.

“Fine. I don’t want you here, either. You should go with them,” Raven said. Then she turned her attention to her monitor once more, focusing on the swirling fields of color, forcing her brain to resolve them into images that she could identify and follow.

“My king will be angry if anything happens to you, tekspeka. It’s my job to make sure nothing does,” Alba snarled, making it clear she regarded Raven as a heinous burden. Then she spat in the Trigedasleng that she was sure Raven didn’t understand, “Stupid crippled whore, who taints him by touching him.”

The hissed words caught on Raven’s ear and froze her spine. She narrowed her eyes and turned her head to gaze again at Alba’s closed and angry face. Raven had heard those words before, exactly like that. The evening she’d listened in to Azgeda barracks chatter.

Alba. It had been Alba saying those words. Alba, who had a distinctive lilt in her voice when she spoke in her first language. Alba, who’d been the viper-tongued bitch who had really gotten off on vividly describing the many demeaning ways Raven would let Roan fuck her, all in compensation for her obvious disabilities.

Raven repressed her shiver of disgust.

“Go,” Raven said, working hard to keep her newfound fury out of her own voice. “You won’t make much of a difference if a pauna does come over that ridge. You can’t carry me away or pose much of an intimidation threat. You’re hardly bigger than I am, and almost as useless if it came to a fight with a granpauna. I’ll tell Ivon and Roan I sent you away, so your ass will be fine.”

Alba drew in a quick breath between her teeth, then swore a quiet, “You fucking proud bitch, I can’t wait to gut you,” under her breath in her native tongue.

But she seized the offer anyway. She whirled and sprang for her horse, dashing off in the direction the others had already taken almost before she’d fully settled herself on her mount’s back.

Raven was relieved to see her go. With protection like that she hardly needed to be worried about a goddamned gorilla. Which she really hoped killed Alba first anyway. Alba couldn’t rot in hell fast enough as far as Raven was concerned.

At the same time, she was very conscious that she was now quite alone. She reached around to the small of her back and pulled out the pistol Nate had pressed on her. She weighed it in her hand, debating it for a fraction of a second, then went ahead and thumbed off the safety before setting it carefully on the ground near her foot, pointed deliberately away from the direction the Azgedans had gone.

On her screen it was hard to separate out the individuals or to make sense of the action. Raven wished like hell she’d had the space to put a basic video feed on the drone. But there were only two spots for cameras, so she’d chosen thermal imaging and an x-ray spectrometer. Thermal imaging to find the paunas, the spectrometer calibrated to look for weakened concrete and mortar so that she could tell Roan where to blow up the walls. The later was now entirely useless to her.

Struggling to decipher the rapid movements of blobby orange figures, it looked to Raven as though Roan and his group had scattered to form a circle around the silverback. The great beast was still pounding at the rider it had downed. The humans circling the pauna had their arms raised as though they were aiming spears or bows. The injured horse was staggering away and out of the screen view. Raven didn’t spare it a second thought. Last night they’d all been assured that these horses were trained to stay near dismounted riders.

A smaller figure, a newly dismounted rider, rushed up to aid their fallen companion, sword arm swinging. The gorilla leveled the attacker with a single blow, tossing the body like a rag doll into the pale grey-violet trunk of a nearby tree.

 _Two riders, one horse down_ , Raven counted under her breath. That left four riders, including Roan, still mounted.

Raven steered the drone higher, hoping for a broader view before swooping around and trying for a better angle to view the action. To her horror, she saw two more large orange shapes bounding over the ridge from the enclosure. Two more adult paunas were coming to the aid of their silverback.

She was vaguely aware that she was repeating, “damn” over and over again, a litany and a prayer and a curse. She had no way to warn the riders to look up beyond willing it so. No way to warn them that they faced three predators, not one.

The silverback should surely have been stuck full of incapacitating arrows by now. It didn’t seem to matter. He burst out of circle, sweeping aside another horse and rider on the way.

 _Three riders, two horses down_ , Raven noted, almost without willing it.

Then a fourth rider spun and hurled what had to have been a hunting spear.

Straight at another dismounted figure Raven was instantly sure had to be Roan.

A riderless horse, fleeing from the new paunas dropping over the ridge, dashed between them at just that moment. The spear landed deep in its shoulder. The horse shuddered, falling to the ground and screaming so loudly that two ridgelines away Raven heard the faint cry.

 _Three riders, three horses down_ , she counted, her mental tally marching on.

“Look up, look up, look up, you fucking idiots,” she muttered to the swirling figures on her screen.

Ivon’s group poured into the vale then. They added still more swirling blobs of orange heat. Made it even harder to pick out the action. It appeared to Raven, though, that two or three more riders immediately leapt off their horses. A fourth rode straight for the rider who had tried to take out Roan. A sweeping strike from the rider’s raised arm sent the would-be assassin’s crumpled figure falling to the ground.

_Four riders, three horses down._

The direct assault on Roan ripped off the thin veil of unity. Now struggling figures converged on each other, making it impossible for Raven to figure out who was who. None of them heard her imploring commands to look up and see the paunas gathering in the trees. “You idiots, you fucking idiots! Look up, look up look up!”

They didn’t look up. Too absorbed in their own fighting to see the renewed danger.

The silverback and two smaller paunas fell on them from above. In the chaos Raven watched another figure vanish under the huge orange blob of a gorilla, and not get up again.

_Five riders down._

She yanked the drone sideways and swiveled the cameras, trying to see everything all at once. Then she heard another horse scream. Zooming back out, she saw that the puanas had pulled down another horse and rider.

_Six riders, four horses, down._

All of the remaining dismounted riders were running for their horses now. While Raven watched she saw a gorilla sweep a thrown spear out of the air with a swing of its mammoth arm.

Once the survivors, five… no … six, riders were mounted they whirled and dashed back in the direction Ivon had come from. Dashed towards Raven.

For horrible panicked stretch of time, Raven wondered if the Azgedan King was already among the dead. Wondered if they were coming for her next. Leading the paunas directly to her.

Then she heard yelling and the gorillas roaring and thundering hooves and crackling underbrush and they burst into view, cresting the further ridgeline.

Her heart actually stopped beating for a moment. The horse in the lead was a solid dark brown.

It took only a blink to clear her vision and refocus on the rider to realize it was Roan. He was just on a different horse. His big black and white piebald had a different rider and was at the rear of the charging pack.

That’s when it came to her. Her arrows. Her fucking, goddamned arrows.

Regular weapons clearly weren’t even slowing the paunas.

She hurled herself at the bag that held them. She was yanking at the zipper just as a regular, deadly-to-humans arrow landed with a sharp thud right where she had been sitting, knocking her folding stool to the ground.

Raven flung herself backwards and stared wildly around, finally catching sight of Larkin. Larkin! That fucking bitch! She’d broken away from Roan’s squad and dashed out along the top of the ridge to come parallel with Raven’s little station. She’d already nocked another arrow and was aiming right for Raven’s heart, her face frozen in a triumphantly evil sneer.

But before Raven had even registered the threat, Ivon had already veered for Larkin. He was firing off his own bow as he pushed his horse over the steep slopes. His shot forced her shot wide as she whirled to face the new threat.

Raven rocked forward and dove for her pistol, dragging the arrow bag behind her. The gun slithered out of her grasp and across the old leaves.

The paunas came soaring over the ridgeline in hot pursuit of their prey, roaring as they flew through the trees.

Roan arrived ahead of the rest, leaping off his horse to grab for the arrow Raven was already holding out for him. He fitted it to his bow, took aim and fired in one sweeping motion.

The arrow hit one of the two smaller paunas and exploded on contact. The creature vanished in a rush of flaming debris, dirt and smoke. The concussive blast made everyone stagger. A fine bloody mist of soot and dust settled across their skin as larger smoldering clumps of bone and fur and tissue pattered to the forest floor around them.

There was a second of shocked silence all around them. Then another horse screamed because the second smaller puana had knocked it on its back, taking out another rider.

Roan fired another arrow and missed by inches, a fountain of dirt and leaf mold rising round the impact. Amazingly the pauna emerged from the dust, so Roan fired a third charged arrow, scoring a direct hit on the fleeing pauna’s broad back. It disappeared instantly in another cloud of bloody, burned debris.

The silverback vanished over the ridge.

A soot-covered rider, Alba Raven realized from her small stature, crawled out of the smoking impact crater and staggered towards them. She raised her blade and started to run unsteadily at Roan, a rusty cry of “Traitor!” ripping out of her burned throat.

Raven scrambled for her pistol, getting her hands around it just as Roan threw his big hunting knife. It sank right into the center of Alba’s throat.

 _Seven riders, five horses, down_. Nothing could stop her mental tally, it seemed, not even successive concussions of hard-packed explosives.

That the voice running down the count inside her brain was beginning to sound more like ALIE with every fresh update was bullshit Raven didn’t have time to deal with. Not right now.

Alba’s body had no sooner tumbled to the ground when Swego cried out another warning, pointing to some new threat.

Raven rolled herself to her feet and spun to see Larkin and Ivon. Both were dismounted now and fighting desperately with their swords on the ridgeline. The clatter and clang loud again as Raven’s hearing returned. Larkin forced Ivon down to his knee, and with one final blow struck him down. Then she turned, dropped her blade and raised her bow.

But Roan had already loosed another of Raven’s arrows. It hit her square in the torso and she vanished into another bloody cloud of dirt and dust.

 _Nine riders down_ , noted ALIE’s precise, clinical voice.

Silence fell on the little group left in the clearing. Raven, Roan, Swego and asshole man, his crested Mohawk covered in sooty bits of leaf and twig.

The four of them looked around at each other, varying degrees of stunned astonishment on their faces. Raven’s ears were still ringing from all the explosions. And then grey-Mohawk lifted his blade and, with a mighty yell, charged straight for Raven.

She raised her gun and shot him, once, twice, three times, dropping him with direct hits to the chest.

He looked, she noted, from a strangely distant place inside her own head, very surprised as he died.

 _Ten riders, six horses down_ , ALIE noted. The voice inside Raven’s head had taken on a smug gloating tone no computer AI should have.

“Stay with Raven,” Roan barked at Swego before running up the hill to Ivon.

Turning to watch Roan go, she saw that Ivon was struggling weakly to sit up. She blew out a shaky sigh of relief. She’d come around to rather liking him, and he’d saved her life. She’d be able to thank him now. Assuming they all made it home.

Which was when Raven realized she’d forgotten about her drone. She scooped up her knocked-over equipment and settled back to work. After long seconds of searching for the signal, she found the drone right where she’d left it, hovering over the first vale. She noted that there were at least two unmoving human forms still emitting full heat signatures, injured not dead, and at least two of the horses she’d thought dead were back on their feet. She raised the drone and sent it to search the pauna den.

There was nothing. Not one orange signature of any size, not even the squirrels and chipmunks that she’d seen before. She raised the drone higher and searched further, looking for paunas in any direction. All three survivors had vanished. Silverback, mother, and young, all gone.

There were no large heat signatures within a one-kilometer radius other than the living and the injured among their party.

Roan was helping Ivon down the slope as she finished her search, calling Ivon’s horse and Larkin’s after them.

Once he’d settled Ivon next to her, Raven showed him her screen, pointing out the images. “Looks like some of your guards are injured, not dead. Paunas are gone.”

Roan nodded, then said, “Swego.”

Swego followed Roan as they swung up on their horses and headed out to investigate.

Raven tended to Ivon’s wounds, which were extensive. He had a defensive slash on his arm, a stab wound in the heavy muscle of his thigh, and a long gash along his ribs. He was conscious, but barely, lost in pain. It took a long time to clean and bandage his wounds with the materials from the medkit Jackson had made up for her.

Roan and Swego returned as she was finishing repacking the first aid supplies. They were leading three horses, one of them limping badly, the other two carrying bodies. Four… no, Raven saw another head, five bodies.

Alba and Mohawk-man were still lying where they fell. Seven bodies. Eight, counting the bits of Larkin Raven refused to let herself focus on. Raven had been successfully blocking them out of her awareness, filling her head with tending to Ivon, but they intruded vigorously now.

“The injured?” Raven asked, trying to put names to the total count, who had fallen when and where. The harsh reality of the grisly business of being part of team murder was beginning to take hold of her consciousness. That the only Azgedan she herself had killed outright had been coming right for her was not much consolation.

“Dead now,” Roan said, clipped and curt.

She considered asking for more information about the injuries, but decided that could wait. He was radiating tension, not relief or regret, and her counts weren’t totaling the right numbers. “What else?”

“Brandon and his horse are gone.”

“What?” she gasped.

“Can you find him with that?” Roan pointed at her equipment.

“I can try.”

“Keep it high, out of sight and hearing if you can.”

Raven was proud of herself for resisting the obvious snippy remark, the one about who knew whose business best.

Instead, she focused on her machines, listening with half an ear to snatches of conversation as Roan and Swego hefted the dead onto another loose horse, and then Ivon onto his own mount. At the edge of her attention, Raven heard them start to move out, Roan’s voice ordering Swego to take Ivon and the dead back to Arkadia.

“Anything?” Roan appeared at her shoulder.

“Nothing yet,” Raven shook her head. “How far could he get in the woods like this?”

“How are you searching?”

“Standard 360 sweep.”

“No.” Roan dropped down to one knee, bringing himself shoulder to shoulder with her. “There are old roadways. He’ll use those. Pull the picture out higher, more like a map. Can you make it show me the trees more clearly?”

The first roadway Roan traced with his finger was a bust, petering out in a washed-out ravine. So they backed up and found another, tracing it out nearly a mile before they saw the flaring orange heat of a man and horse.

“He’s headed for Polis,” Roan said after a moment of fiddling with the controls himself, scanning the area to his satisfaction, having learned what to do by watching her hands. “I have to go after him.”

Then he looked at her. “And it seems you’ll be coming with me.”

He cocked his head curiously. “Have you ever been to Polis?”

Raven shook her head. “No.”

“It was the center of the coalition for nearly a century. The commander’s tower beacon is visible for miles in every direction.”

“You’re going to be, what, my tour guide?” Raven couldn’t help but snicker, though even she could hear the hysteria bubbling faintly along the edge.

“Why not?”

“Brandon!” she reminded him, gesturing at the screen.

“Right,” he smiled ruefully at her. “After we kill him.”

She blinked a little. “We?”

He nodded, as though this was wholly unremarkable. “Your tools and tech, my hand.”

Raven swallowed hard, reminded herself that Brandon was still the important target, and asked, “How?”

“We’ll follow him. Make sure he doesn’t turn aside. Run him to ground in Polis if not sooner.”

“Ok. Cool,” she nodded several times, feeling overwhelmed by this unexpected alteration of their plans but determined not to show him.

Roan must have heard something in her voice. He raised his hand to grip her shoulder reassuringly. “We’ve got this.”

Together they packed up her gear, caught the rest of the wandering horses and loaded them up.

Roan tossed her up on a mare. “She’ll follow me, I’ll lead the pack horses. You just stay in the saddle.”

“We’ll be walking, right?” Raven asked, watching him as he shortened the stirrups for her legs, wincing as he moved her bad leg around to the right angle and shoved her foot in. She not very hopeful of getting the answer that she wanted.

“No. But a canter is smoother than a trot. We’ll take breaks often so you can check on your drone.”

“How far away is Polis?” she asked, watching him swing easily up on his own horse.

“A few hours if I were by myself. With you and a pack string,” he paused, frowning as he recalculated, “maybe double that. We’ll get there tonight, at any rate.”

Raven tried for a smile, but was pretty sure it read as a grimace. “Okay, then. We’d better get started.”

He nodded, then spun his horse neatly, and started off. Raven’s horse, whose name she’d already forgotten, swung round to follow with a sideways, shoulder-dropping lurch, leaving Raven swaying awkwardly, clinging to the reins and the saddle horn, and swearing gently and steadily under her breath.

This was going to suck. A lot. But she couldn’t think of another option.

A little too late, the old adage, ‘be careful what you wish for,’ filtered through her brain. She’d wanted an adventure with Roan. Defending him from people who wanted to kill him had seemed right. Noble even. And entirely in the best interests of Arkadia, and of the thousands more in the coalition who, whether they knew it or not, depended on him to see them through the coming storms.

It still seemed right. It was right. The ugly reality of the bodies Swego was carrying back to Arkadia for proper burning by Azgedan tradition, of Larkin’s body, which they hadn’t even tried to collect, didn’t change the calculus. But it took away any shine.

Raven told herself, very firmly, that she couldn’t hear ALIE laughing at her. Because no AI was capable of laughter.

 


	6. Chapter 6

“I’m sorry.” Raven sighed, raising her head from her screen to meet Roan’s eyes. He was seated next to her on a fallen log. “I think he’s pulling ahead even more.”

“Why are you sorry?” Roan protested. “Without your tech, we wouldn’t even know that much.”

“I’m slowing you down.”

He shook his head. “No, you aren’t.”

She made a face at him. Polite lies were irritating from anyone, but especially from him.

“Okay. Yes. You are.” He ducked his head and turned away, dropping a shoulder to concede the point. “But it isn’t you. You’re doing fine. It’s your gear.”

He hooked his thumb in the general direction of the edge of the old road. Her bags of equipment were secured to the saddles of the horses tethered there. Once belonging to his soldiers, they were temporarily pressed into service as pack ponies. And they weren't very good at it. Roan had been swearing at them for an hour as he dragged them behind his own mount.

“Those horses are trained for hunting and war. They aren’t good at staying in a single line even at a walk. Not,” he added, sourness lacing through his tone, “that we can even work up to a trot in these woods.

The smooth grade of the old roadbed was clear enough in the forest floor. But it was littered with fallen trees and clogged with sprawling thorn-covered bushes. Finding a path among them was like picking through a narrow maze. One guarded by razor wire and full of tripping hazards. It had required steady attention lest they snag themselves, or a horse stumble and fall.

It was also exhausting. The unmoving air under the forest canopy was thick with heat and humidity. Tiny swarming insects buzzed around their heads, occasionally flying into her eyes, nearly blinding her, or into her mouth, making her hack and spit. She'd stripped down to her last tank top despite the bugs and the branches and the thorns. Anything else was unbearably hot, and yet her arms and neck and face were all still beaded with sweat. It ran in rivulets down her back and between her breasts, settling into the wet fabric where her shirt was tucked into the waist of her trousers.

She’d had plenty of time in the last hour to contemplate her desire for an adventure with Roan, and consider again the adage about getting what you wish for.

She wasn’t sorry. Not exactly. She didn’t have any decisions she regretted. Each step had led logically to the next.

Realizing she could understand Trigedasleng as though she were born to it had led to spying.

Spying had led to uncovering an assassination plot, one aimed at Roan and herself. One that aimed to divide Azgeda and Skaikru over their dead bodies.

This naturally enough had led to them drawing up a covert counter-assassination scheme. Inspired by her own mad brain wave of disguising the murders as a Puana hunt gone bad, she and Roan had served as the bait to lure his traitorous guards into the trap.

Most of the would-be assassins had died there, just as she and Roan had intended. Pulled down by the great beasts, or cut down by Roan himself with sword and bow, when they’d finally turned on him in rage and despair.

Or felled by her. With the handgun pressed on her at the last moment by Nate Miller. One pistol. One kill. The gun was tucked into her saddlebag now, but if she thought about it she could still feel the weight of it in her palm. Feel the slight recoil when it fired. Once. Twice. Three times. Hear the faint thud of the body hitting the ground at her feet. See his sword slip from his lifeless fingers.

And now she and Roan were hunting down the last lone assassin who, in the midst of all the chaos and confusion, had escaped Roan's vengeance.

Simple. Logical. Reasonable.

And entirely insane. Start to finish.

She, Raven Reyes, the best mechanical engineer left on earth on the eve of the second apocalypse, was out in the middle of the fucking wilderness. Riding on a horse. Tracking a warrior trained since childhood in all the many ways to kill enemies and allies alike. With her bum leg and her bad back, and no relevant skills, she was offering Roan little but an extra bit of baggage to haul through a nearly trackless forest.

What in the ever-loving hell had she been thinking when she’d insisted on coming along on this adventure?

Their recent progress had been slow enough for her, of course. Broken by only a few short bursts of horribly bumpy travel that rattled her teeth, bruised her crotch, and left her longing, again – always – for space and zero-g. Or just for her quiet workshop back in Arkadia.

On the upside, Raven could clearly see the trail Brandon and his horse had made as they crashed through the underbrush a few hours ahead of their pursuit. Unfortunately it was equally clear, from the broken branches and the depth of the hoof prints in softer ground that wherever he could, that he’d been moving much faster than a walk

She looked from the horses at the edge of the road back to the glowering man beside her. “Why can’t we trot more often?”

Raven wasn’t at all sure which gait this referred to. Though she did have dark suspicions. She was ignorant despite having endured Octavia prattling happily about learning to ride and care for her horse in the weeks after Kane had arranged the trade for him. Truth was, Raven had barely absorbed one word in twenty of Octavia’s horse chatter. Never dreaming that any of the information would ever be even the slightest bit relevant to her own life.

More fool her. Useful knowledge could be found in even the least obvious encounters. A lesson she would contemplate later.

“You look utterly miserable when we do,” Roan replied. “I’m worried you’re going to bounce right off and end up on the ground.”

“Oh,” Raven shivered in dismay as her fears were confirmed, “ _that’s_  the trot.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t bounce,” she muttered resentfully.

“No. When it’s slow, like today, you can absorb the horse’s motion up through your hips and lower back.”

He spun sideways, leaning back to lift one leg across to straddle the log they were sharing, before scooting forward to frame her inside his legs.

“Like this.” He spanned the small of her back with his left hand, then began gently pushing and releasing to mimic the movement of the horse. “The idea is settle your weight into your feet and then rock your pelvis in sync with the horse’s steps.”

With every light push Raven’s whole upper body swayed.

“Think about keeping this part of your body quiet.” He lifted his right hand and pressed it flat across her sternum. Holding her upper body stationary as he continued to press rhythmically against the small of her back. “Take all the movement in your pelvis and hips.”

Raven did as he asked. It was a simple enough motion. But she was also very conscious of the feel of his palm against her chest. Of the pressure of his other hand in the small of her back, just above her ass. Of his rumbling voice next to her ear. Of the gentle sway in her body in response to his touch. Of her hips rocking forward and back. Of the rough bark pressing under the backs of her thighs and her ass. Of how the movement rolled her saddle-tender cunt just into the seam of her trousers and then let her fall back. Again. And again. Teasing pressure. Just…so.

Images of a completely different kind of  _riding_ , of the rocking of pelvises and hips, flooded her imagination, or her memory, or both. Making her palms tingle and leading to an entirely different ache between her legs.

She slid her gaze over to him, wondering if he had as little self-control as she did. She cataloged the tells. The drooping of his eyelids. The faint parting of his lips. The way his eyes tracked the faint sway in her tits.

Little things. Small hints that left her sure he was losing the thread in exactly the same way she was.

She raised her brow, smirk stealing across her own face. “You sure you’re still talking about riding a horse?”

“I was!” he replied. His gaze drifted from her boobs to her eyes and back again. “Not anymore.”

“I’m not either,” she confessed, her imagination full of straddling his lap and rocking to an entirely different beat.

His gaze snapped back up to hers. “We don’t have much time.”

Raven pouted, half-playful, half-real. “Not enough time, no.”

He frowned thoughtfully at her, clearly beginning to do some quick calculations in his head.

Surprised into laughter, Raven tried to insist, “That wasn’t a challenge!”

“Wasn’t it?” He was smirking at her now.

Her immediate “No!” ended on a squeak.

Her breath had been stolen by the teasing graze of his fingernails along her skin, just under the neckline of her T-shirt.

Her shoulders contracted almost automatically, but she raised her eyes to his, and didn’t shake him off.

He drew his fingertips along the rise of her left breast, dipped down into the curve of her cleavage and then up to skim along the swell of her right tit, finally curling softly under the edge of her bra strap. Pulling her shirt and her bra off her shoulder, slowly exposing her bare flesh to the air, he bent to kiss the edge of her collarbone, his lips warm and his beard softly tickling against her skin.

Her eyelids fluttered closed and her breathing caught unsteadily.

“Roan!” She meant it as a sharp rebuke. It came out as a breathy whisper.

“Hmm?”

He was steadily tugging the straps of her tank top and her bra lower, chasing the fabric down her chest with his lips, making her tremble and sigh.

She forced her eyes open, struggling for some sort of control over herself. Over her situation. Over him. “I…”

Her swollen nipple bobbed free and he drew it into his mouth, sucking at it until he’d drawn in the whole of her areola, teasing the hardended tip with his tongue. An electric jolt slammed straight down to her crotch and she whimpered, deep in her throat.

Her eyes closed again.

We he finally pulled back, letting go slowly before blowing gently across the wetness he’d left behind, making her shiver.

“You’re making promises you can’t keep,” she murmured, even as she arched her back, lifting her chest closer to his lips.

“Not to you.” He raised his head and caught her chin with his fingertips, drawing her face towards his own. Pressing his lips to one corner of her mouth, and then to the other. Letting his fingers drift down the line of her throat and lower to cradle her naked breast. Catching her swollen and tender nipple, rolling it gently between his fingers. “Not about this.”

Raven abandoned the fight she’d been very half-heartedly waging against her own better sense. Dropping her tablet into her lap, she turned fully into him, wound her hands around his neck to pull herself closer and kissed him, all open-mouthed desire and hungry scraping teeth.

How long their delay would have lasted, she never learned. Her tablet slipped off her lap and bounced to the ground. Kissing Roan was lovely, but her equipment was irreplaceable.

She jerked back to snatch it up, tugging her straps up over her shoulder. She stuffed her boob back inside her bra as best she could one-handed, all the while cradling her precious tech inside her protective arm.

“Brandon,” she said once she was covered again, raising the screen between them, half-shield, half-barrier, positioned so that he could see the readouts.

He looked more amused than disappointed.

Taking the screen from her hands, he tilted it at a better angle for himself. “Yes. My traitor. Has he changed course at all?”

Raven peered over the top edge, picking out the orange blob that was Roan’s steadily escaping quarry. “I don’t think so. Still headed in more or less a straight line north.”

Roan studied the image for a moment, reaching up to expand the field. He was getting very familiar with the controls.

Then he looked up at her. “Can you pull up one of those old maps on this?”

“Pull up a map?” She grinned at him, suddenly feeling very proud of her star – and at the moment only – pupil. “Look who is learning tech speak.”

His answering grin, all warm and gratified, brought completely unexpected butterflies into Raven’s chest. “Look who is learning to ride a horse!” he said.

Raven snorted dismissively, waving his compliment away.

“Very funny,” she said. “You just told me you’re afraid I’m going to fall off at any moment.”

He shook his head, denying her mockery. “You’ve been riding a horse for only a few hours, and already you’ve covered more rough terrain than many who’ve ridden for years.”

His eyes, framed as always by the wayward strands that fell from his hair tie, were glowing with sincerity.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” she raised her chin and batted her eyelashes at him. “I am awesome.”

“Yes.” He smiled at her in a way that made her feel like she stood in the heart of a sun, and was burnished and tempered and made strong. “I know.”

“Map?” he prompted.

“On it.” She took the screen and fiddled with the menu for a moment before handing it back and pointing to the red dot she’d put in the middle. “There’s the zoo, right in the center.”

He accepted the tablet and promptly increased the field, pulling out until he was looking at a wide overview of the territory.

“Look.” He swung back around on the log to sit beside her again, holding the tablet so they could both see the image right side up. He pointed out a thin blue line with his fingertip. “I think this is the road we’re on right now, and Brandon is heading north to join the West Road here.” He touched the screen and the image shifted dramatically. “Shit. What’d I do?”

“It’s hard to get the hang of it,” Raven assured him, reaching across his arm to bring the view he wanted back into the frame. “What’s the West Road?”

“This.” He indicated a wider yellow line, carefully not touching the screen this time. “It’s the main road connecting Polis and Azgeda. Brandon’s route will take him here.” He indicated where the thin blue line intersected with the broader yellow one. “If he turns west, he’s headed for Azgeda. If he turns east, then Polis.”

“How long until we know?”

He flipped the tabs himself, bringing back up the image from her drone, and then switched back and forth between the two several times.

“Not long,” he said at last, frowning deeply at the screen.

“If he’s headed west, what happens next?”

“Same as if he heads east. We go to Polis. We don’t have the supplies for a run to Azgeda.”

Raven granted, if privately and grudgingly, that this was a very diplomatic way for him to frame the impossibility of dragging her and her gear with him all the many miles to his principal city.

“I don’t think he will go west, though,” Roan continued his musing aloud. “His goal is to break the alliance between Azgeda and Skaikru, and get me killed along the way if he can. The only place to do that is Polis.” Roan traced the yellow road on the map, following along to the old city labeled ‘Baltimore.’ “He’ll be there before dark.”

“We won’t catch him before then.” Raven asserted the fact this was.

“No. We won’t.”

“What happens when we get there?”

“We should make some plans. I don’t want to give him any more time to cause trouble than I have to.”

Once they were moving again, Raven kept her tablet balanced on the saddle in front of her. She focused on their quarry to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, relying on her horse to follow Roan’s. In a depressingly short time, the hot orange oval representing Brandon and his horse turned east onto the larger road.

~~~~

“Are they still headed north?” Clarke asked as soon as she entered the small workshop Wick had claimed as his own.

None of the little group clustered around Wick’s shoulders so much as flinched at her arrival, or her question. None stepped aside to make room for her to see the wall-mounted screen that held their attention either. So she started worming her way to the front, freely using her elbows to clear her path.

When she reached Bellamy’s side in the front of the pack, he nodded up at the screen. “They’re still headed up that old road.”

Clarke picked out the two blinking dots that represented Raven and Roan. They were still nearly on top of each other, still hovering over the thin line that represented what had once been a state highway.

“How much longer will we be able to track them?” she asked.

“Two miles. Maybe three. Then they’re out of range,” Monty answered her, his shoulders hunched as he stared at the images.

“Swego?” Clarke looked over at Roan’s last uninjured loyal man, who was also transfixed by the images in front of them. “Do you still think they’re going to turn for Polis?”

“I don’t know,” he said, lifting one hand and dropping it in a gesture of uncertainty Clarke remembered Lincoln using. “In a few miles they’ll cross the West Road, according to your old maps. They could go either way. East to Polis, or west to Azgeda.”

“And we just might be able to hold onto their signals long enough to tell which route they choose,” Wick said, forestalling Clarke’s next question. “Exactly the same as I told you thirty minutes ago when you were last in here.”

“And really,” Monty added, “it depends on where Brandon goes, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Swego responded. He’d been certain earlier that Brandon was going to go straight for Polis and Roan would follow. But the longer Roan had held to his steady northward route, the less sure of his king’s intentions he’d been.

Bellamy turned to look at her, “How is Ivon?”

“Better,” she told him. “We’ve got him all stitched up. Determined to help Roan however he can.”

“Can we question him yet?” Bellamy asked.

“Yes. He’s pretty groggy, but he’s anxious to talk with you, too. That’s what I came to tell you.”

After Bellamy and Miller left for the clinic and a debrief with Ivon, Clarke drifted closer to Wick. “I know you’re getting everything you can out of the equipment,” she said to him, keeping her voice low and encouraging.

Wick shook his head, glowering at the blinking dots. “I swear to God, Clarke…”

She cut him off. “He won’t let anything happen to her.”

Wick’s voice sank lower. “What if it’s not up to him?”

Clarke dropped her hand onto his shoulder and gripped him as reassuringly as she could. “He won’t let that happen, either.”

She met Swego’s eyes across Wick’s head. He swallowed hard, and made the same one-handed gesture of uncertainty as he had before. Clarke really hoped Wick hadn’t seen it.

Twenty minutes later, the dots winked out.

Clarke’s heart dropped to her toes when Monty delivered the news to her in the clinic.

“Don’t panic yet,” Wick muttered, glancing up from his pacing as she rushed in. “If they head east, the road drops south in a few miles, for just a bit. We may get a flicker.”

“Come eat your supper, Clarke.” Bellamy had trailed after her to Wick’s workroom. “If they do turn east, Kane says we’ll head straight for Polis as soon as we know for sure. Aim to get there about the same time they do. United front and all that. You should be ready when we get the word.”

“I know Roan’s good at what he does,” she fretted, as they walked towards the mess hall, “but the last time he rode into Polis blind, he nearly died. We all nearly died.”

“He’s not facing ALIE and her chipped hordes, Clarke. And there’s no traitor in our ranks to give away his plans. Not this time. And he has plenty of real friends. Ivon and Swego both insist that Brandon and his group are a tiny minority faction inside Azgeda. That most are still loyal to Roan, and to the crown.”

“I should have insisted that Raven stay home. I should have gone in her place.”

“Clarke…” Bellamy began, but then he trailed off with a frustrated sigh.

“What?”

“You aren’t responsible for every single thing that goes wrong, and you shouldn’t be so quick to assume that other people aren’t competent. Or that Raven isn’t capable of taking care of herself and doing what’s best for Arkadia at the same time.”

Clarke turned to stare at him, but he wasn’t even looking at her. He was studying Jasper Jordan, who was sitting in a far corner of the mess, dealing out poker hands to a boisterous group.

Clarke bit back whatever impulsive thing she might have said next. ALIE was gone, and Raven and Jasper, each in their own way, had been instrumental in making that happen. Instead she murmured her agreement that Raven was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

Just as they finished their meal, Kane appeared at the entry of the mess hall and summoned them with a quick nod and tilt of his head. Roan and Raven had definitely turned east, though Wick had only been able to track them on his screens for a half-mile or so before their signals were lost for good.

“Here’s the handheld that the Mt. Weather soldiers used.” Monty pressed a chunky black radio scanner into Clarke’s hand. “It’s only got about a two-hundred meter range, so it won’t pick them up until you’re pretty close.”

“How high up does it go?” Bellamy asked.

“What?” Monty looked at him, his eyes wide with surprise.

“That tower has thirty fucking floors.”

“Oh. Um.” Monty turned, “Wick?”

Wick raised his hands helplessly. “Fifty meters? Maybe more? Less with distance.”

They were already at the Rover when Swego appeared, Ivon leaning heavily on his arm. They insisted on joining Clarke and the rest, Ivon speaking for both, his speech halting as he gasped for air under his strained ribs.

“We were there. At the pauna’s den. Larkin wasted her shot by turning on me while the paunas attacked her kru. Swego saw Brandon turn his back on the prey and try to kill the king, and then while our party was still in the heat of the fight with the great beasts, he turned and fled. They are traitors to all of Azgeda for these breaches of hunting law, not just to Roan. We must give our witness to the King’s council.”

By the time they’d switched around to the truck and strapped Ivon into a field gurney, the sun had nearly disappeared behind the western mountains, and Clarke was practically hopping from foot to foot in her agitation. Trusting in Raven was all well and good, but she couldn't trust how the grounders might react to Raven. Roan might be riding towards his friends and allies, but Raven was leaving hers further and further behind.


	7. Chapter 7

Raven kept her eyes focused on the narrow stretch of road that was framed by her horse’s bobbing ears. 

All time before now had ceased to have meaning. There was no future. The only reality was the hard-packed ribbon of earth drawing out endlessly ahead of them. The ancient road surface jarring her hip with every pounding stride her horse took. 

They’d been cantering along what was clearly a main thoroughfare for a small eternity. Ever since they’d turned east, Brandon’s hot orange blip luring them on to Polis and whatever waited there. 

Twilight had come and gone as they rode, and with the loss of the sun the air had grown uncomfortably cool on her bare arms. It was full dark now, but still so clear that the starlight and the waning moon were enough to illuminate the grey dirt of the old highway. Transforming it into a palely glimmering, never-ending thread leading them onward. No beginning, no end.

Raven’s consciousness had shrunk to the mantra, ‘You can stay on until the next bend in the road.’ 

The road – for better and worse – had many bends. 

Eventually Roan began to slow his horse, settling the snorting pack string into a walk with a series of muttered Trigedasleng curses aimed at their horrible parentage. Raven held back any audible sounds of relief only by biting hard on the inside of her lips.

He waited for her to come up alongside him before asking, “Can you still identify him?”

Raven pulled up her tablet, adjusted the screen, and after a few moments of scowling, sighed, “No. I’ve lost him. It’s worse than before. There are too many other heat signatures under the drone, now that he’s on the edge of the city. There’s no way for me to be sure which one is him.”

Roan shrugged, his lips briefly drawing down into a near perfect upside down ‘u’ of resigned acceptance. “We’re less than a hour from the tower now. We expected this. Can you pull the drone back here, checking that the road between us and the outskirts of Polis is still empty? Then we should pack it away.”

“Of course. But I’ll need a place to break it down.”

“There’s a spot just ahead.”

Roan scouted it out, just to be on the safe side he assured her, while she sat in her saddle on the edge of the road, in the deep shadows under the trees.

She tried very hard to ignore the damply creeping darkness of the forest at her back, gripping her gun tighter in one hand and the lead line for the balky pack string in the other. As if she had the slightest notion what she would do with either should anything sneak up on her.

Fortunately, nothing and no one did surprise her before Roan reappeared, cantering easily over to her to take back the other horses.

The turnout was a patchy little clearing with a rusted out fire-ring more or less in the center. It was surrounded by a few fallen logs that had been dragged over to serve as seats. 

Once they came to a full stop, Raven discovered she was so tired as she sat there in the saddle that her left leg was trembling. She was barely able to kick it free from the stirrup, and only then with her hand on her brace to assist. There was no way her leg would take her weight, so she had no idea how she was going to get off her horse’s back. 

“Lean forward, as though you were going to lie along the horse’s neck,” Roan’s quiet voice startled her, but his hand was firm on her thigh, holding her steady. “Now, kick your right leg backward and slide it over, until you’re on your belly sideways across the saddle.”

Raven followed his instructions, awkwardly and grunting with effort, and then she was sliding backwards into his chest, his hands at her hips guiding and catching her as she dropped to the dirt, bending deeply on her good right knee as she landed. 

His body was so warm that she wanted to melt into the heat rising off of him. 

When he pressed his thumbs into the muscles on either side of her lower spine, she whimpered in relief, rocking forward to cling to the horse still in front of her, dropping her forehead into the rough saddle fur and wordlessly begging for more.

Roan obliged, working the whole of her back in firm strokes, ending with his hands along the base of her neck, pinching so deeply into the pressure points along the ridge of her shoulders she hissed from the pain. Then the pain eased as the knots unspooled, and, to her intense regret, he ran his hands up and down her bare arms a few times, kissed the top of her head, and stepped away. 

“Drone’s still headed in the wrong direction, Raven.”

“I know. I’m on it.”

By the odd greenish-yellow light of the solar-powered lantern, Raven recalled her drone. After that, there was nothing to do but wait, one eye on the monitoring screen, while the little-engine-that-could flew back towards them.

“So,” Raven cleared her throat as she settled onto her folding stool, reaching down to turn out the light to conserve the power, “You were making plans?”

Finished with whatever he was doing with the horses, Roan had tossed a saddle fur onto the ground next to her and now he dropped down to sit at her knee. He was positioned, she noted, so that he had a clear view of the road in front of them, with his blades laid neatly at his side, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. 

“There are two options,” he said, his eyes on the road. “One, I leave you someplace safe and trust Wick and Bellamy to find you using your tracker.”

“What counts as safe?”

“Somewhere out here, in the woods, would be best. “ He looked up at her face, his expression confident. “If they take the roads, they should be able to pick you up no later than early afternoon tomorrow.”

“Alone? In the dark?” Her voice rose at the end despite her determination to play it cool. 

“Or,” he’d clearly heard her dismay, “you could hide in Polis with people I trust.”

That this had not been his first choice was not a good sign as far as Raven was concerned. “How well do you trust them?”

“Enough.” He was looking back out at the road.

“Okay, then. Not really a ringing endorsement. Stick a pin in the ‘split up’ idea and tell me the other option.”

He glanced at her, his brow raised in question, willing as always to be distracted by new idioms. “Stick a pin in it?”

“It means, set it aside to be discussed later.”

Raven had noted Roan’s mean one-eyebrow lift of brutal skepticism before. Now, with the cool light of the stars staining his dark brows nearly black while at the same time leaching color from his skin, his arched eyebrow was just that much more dramatically condescending. 

“Is that all it means?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, irritation and chill combining to make her even blunter than usual. “It means it’s a horrible idea and I have no intention of coming back to it ever, but I’m trying to be diplomatic.” 

His grim expression broke into a wide grin and he ducked his head back toward the road with an almost silent chuckle, only the movement in his shoulders giving him away. “That’s what it sounded like. You could just say, ‘No’.”

His quiet teasing was oddly soothing. 

“No,” she said, far more calmly. “No splitting up. Next plan?”

“We stay together, you help me root out the conspiracy in Polis, and then I eliminate the traitors.”

“Yes! Of course!” This sounded so infinitely better to Raven than staying alone in the woods, or hiding with untrustworthy strangers, that she demanded, “Why didn’t you start with that? Of course I stay with you.”

His pause was overlong, and his question, when he asked it, was very deliberate. “How ‘with’ me do you want to be?”

“Um… this feels like a trick question.”

His eyes glimmered faintly in the weak moonlight as he tilted his head to glance sidelong at her. “It’s a political question.” 

Raven burrowed deeper into the jacket she’d retrieved from her gear, fisting her hands into the pockets. “That’s worse.”

“For your people, there still seems to be a … distinction between the public and the domestic, between private and political.”

“Yeah…” she agreed doubtfully, thinking of Bellamy and Clarke and the way their whatever-the-hell-it-was consumed every gossipy busybody in Arkadia. She added, “That’s the dream, anyway.”

“It isn’t like that for us. For Azgeda, or the other clans.” 

“Public and private aren’t separate, even as an ideal?”

“No. Everyone is tied to everyone else through bonds of respect and obedience. Romantic and sexual connections complicate that, so everyone expects to know about them. Especially if you’re…. me.”

Raven was vaguely aware that a pit had just opened at her feet, a pit where she had thought solid ground lay. “Why didn’t you say this before?”

“Because in your territory, in Arkadia, I thought I could adapt to your Skaikru habits. We could be lovers, secret or open, just because it pleased us and it would go no further than that.”

“Okay,” she said, after a pause indicated that he was waiting for her to respond.

“I also thought that you, and our affair, could both stay behind when I left.” His voice softened as he added, “Untouched by Polis, or the coalition, or by Azgeda. Unique. Separate. _Personal_.” His deep voice curled over the word, almost savoring it, it seemed to Raven. “No one’s concern but our own.” His tone on that part was definitely wistful.

More moved than she would’ve expected by this vision of his time with her as something he cherished, Raven was also pretty sure she didn’t like any of things he wasn’t saying out loud. “But, if I ride into Polis with you tonight…?” 

“Then it’s not just ours anymore,” Roan replied, sighing heavily as he spoke. “It’s not contained. It becomes political. We,” he gestured between them, “become political. We will be seen as a statement of a deeper tie between Azgeda and Skaikru. Even as a marker of a new formal alliance. An alliance that would shift all other alliances with Azgeda to the side in favor of a strong tie between Azgeda and Skaikru.”

“I see,” Raven frowned. Considering his words, trying to understand all he was implying. She played out various imagined scenarios in her head, and the more she considered the worse each one got. Overwhelmed by all the complicated ramifications of any action at all, she said, “I should have gone back with Ivon, or just waited where I was for extraction by Bellamy and Miller.”

“Alone near the pauna feeding grounds? No!” Roan immediately objected. “We all should have gone back to Arkadia and then asked for transport to Polis.”

It was her turn to disagree, vigorously shaking her head. “You had to track him, Roan. It’s the only way you’d know if he turned aside, or met up with allies outside of the city, or headed off to hide out with a different clan.” 

He fell quiet, silence his concession. While he sat thinking, Raven contemplated his profile. She wondered when she’d traded in pretty boys for this man, all sharp angles and hard muscles and deep scars. 

“What if,” she offered, thinking aloud, “I were to go openly into Polis… but not stay with you? Drop me off with Indra, or something like that?”

“Brandon is hours ahead of us, spreading gossip and news already. If you come into the city with me, but then we try to hide our love affair, or pretend it isn’t happening, that would make it much worse. People will imagine all sorts of conspiracies.”

“So we go in together and go straight to the tower. Together.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “I think that’s best.”

“Then what?”

“The conspirators do something rash. I respond.”

Raven waited for more detail. And waited. Finally she understood. “ _ **That’s**_ your plan? Counting on your opponents to do something rash?” 

“You’ve been dealing with the clans for months,” he reminded her. “Subtlety and patience aren’t really our strength.”

“Mmm,” Raven conceded after a thoughtful pause. For the first time it occurred to her that his relative subtlety and patience were the very qualities that made Roan different, and held apart, among his own people. “Fair enough.”

“If we arrive together, publicly,” he explained, “that will push them into making another move, revealing themselves in the process. This will allow me to defuse the conspiracy. Either by challenge or by persuasion. Mostly likely, some of both."

"Challenge?" she asked, not really liking the sound of that.

"Combat."

"More of the same as at the pauna den, then," she said, hugging her folded arms closer and mentally tiptoeing around the images of the dead that floated through her brain. Alba and Larkin, and grey-Mohawk man, and the rest whose names she'd barely known and now never would. 

_Eight dead in all,_ ALIE’s unwelcome voice whispered. Raven pretended she hadn’t heard her.

And now there would be more dead.

"Yes. Combat,” Roan agreed. “And like today, there will be risk for you. Kane and Bellamy will most likely want to shoot me – again – when it’s all over.”

“How risky?”

“We could both die before sunset tomorrow.”

Recalling the sights and sounds of a pauna disintegrating into so much messily exploded debris in front of her, shot by Roan with a weapon of her own design, Raven sat up straighter. “Like any other day on the late great planet Earth, then.”

This time Roan laughed. “More or less. Yes. Exactly.”

“Good thing you’ve got me then, yeah? We’re still armed. All your weapons, plus the six explosive-tipped arrows we still have, and my gun.” She still had seventeen rounds, if she’d counted right. She’d double-check later. “Do you know how to use it?” she asked, just in case.

“Your handgun?”

“Yes.”

“Bellamy showed me.”

“Fine,” she said, making a mental note to review it again with him later. “I’m in. With you. We’ll see this through together. After all, I’m your…” 

Raven faltered, the word ‘girlfriend’ suddenly sticking in her throat. Was she? Was he her boyfriend? What did that even mean, for a king? For a grounder? Did they even have a word for that? Her translation program was ominously silent when she asked.

She frowned. “What am I to you, Roan? What is our relationship, exactly, the one between you and me? The one you hoped to keep separate from politics?”

Roan looked at her, then looked away. Apparently thinking that the horizon where the road bent west towards Azgeda held some answer. Finally, after another sidelong glance at her he said, “Those are complicated questions.”

“That’s a shitty answer,” she snapped.

“Our affair wasn’t supposed to leave…”

“To leave Arkadia,” she interrupted, stung despite her repeated assurances to herself that she, too, had been completely fine with a brief love affair. “I get it.”

“In Arkadia, it was only you and me. Together for as long as we cared to be. Then a clean break, both of us moving on with our own people.”

Irritation prickling along her skin and ‘clean break’ ringing in her ears, she retorted, “Until it wasn’t only you and me. Until it did leave Arkadia, and your people thought that by murdering you and me both, they could sever the tie between Azgeda and Skaikru, maybe even break the whole coalition. Which is how we ended up here, alone in the woods at night, chasing a would-be assassin all the way to Polis.”

“Yes. You see? I’m sorry. I carry politics with me no matter what I do and where I go.” His shoulders rose with his frustration, and his voice dropped closer to true growl when he added, “A lesson I can’t seem to learn no matter how often or how brutally it’s taught.” 

And just like that, the King of Azgeda, Commander of the whole coalition, abruptly reminded Raven of each and every Alpha station asshat she’d ever known in her life. Because of course he did. Like those from Alpha, he’d been born into privilege and power both. He expected the universe to bend his way. And no matter how often it didn’t, he was surprised every time.

“So you were just going to leave!” she said, a surge of anger warming her right up and bleeding over into her voice. “Thanks for the fucks, take care, try not to burn up in the radiation wave!” 

“Yes. I was. And,” he sat up straighter and looked directly at her, taking his eyes fully off the road, “I thought you’d welcome it, when the day came.” 

“What?!” Raven nearly squawked.

“Raven, you didn’t even want your friends to know we were fucking until last week! So, yes. I thought you would be relieved to see me go, because I pushed you into something you didn’t really want for yourself. And now, of course… this mess,” he waved his fingers, indicating everything they’d been through in the last several days.

“I _never_ thought that!” 

He just stared at her, challenge rising off him from the tilt of his head to the thrust of his jaw. 

“I didn’t!” she protested, raising her own chin. Or, at least, in the last week she’d stopped thinking that. Started thinking it was nice to have him around, to fall asleep spooned up against him, and to wake up to his hands on her skin. Started to have fun working with him to solve a puzzle. 

“Besides, you couldn’t push me anywhere I don’t want to go no matter how hard you tried. As for now…” she trailed off, not at all sure what she wanted to say, or even what she truly felt.

“Now?”

What she thought about saying was, ‘ _now I have no idea what I want, but you don’t get to decide for me, you fucking asshole,_ ’ but she didn’t. Because him leaving was still the inevitable conclusion, probably even the right conclusion, even if she no longer wanted it.

“Raven?” he prompted after she was silent too long.

“It’s….” she trailed off again, still trying to find some other words.

“Yes?”

She lifted the corner of her mouth, all too aware of the irony. “Complicated.”

Clearly startled, he was silent for a long moment as he stared at her, and then he said evenly, “Good talk. Glad we settled that.”

“Yeah,” Raven grimaced, huddling still deeper into her coat, “Good talk…”

“Hey,” he said, his voice gentler, holding up his hand. “Come sit with me. I can see you shivering from here.”

Raven grumbled that she was exhausted, not cold, but she took his hand and let him draw her down to sit between his legs, the warm breadth of his chest at her back. She didn’t hesitate to lean into his embrace, rolling her head against his shoulder to rest just under his chin, and closing her eyes, telling herself that she’d check on her drone in just one second.

She only opened them with Roan’s hands on her upper arms, gently jostling her from her doze. “Drone’s back,” he said.

~~~~

“Let me get this straight,” Clarke said as the truck rumbled its way along the old roadbed towards Polis. “Roan’s plan – if you even can call it a plan? – is to walk into the middle of his enemies and challenge them to try to kill him before he kills them?”

“Yes,” Ivon said with a dignified nod. Which somehow turned lying nearly flat while strapped onto a gurney into a position of authority. “That’s his backup plan. His first plan is always to try and talk his way out. And the numbers should be on his side.”

“Those are both stupid plans!” she said.

“There is always risk, but it usually works out for him.”

“No, it doesn’t!” Bellamy objected from his spot on the floor of the truck. “When he entered the arena with Lexa, she kicked his ass!”

Ivon craned his head to look down at Bellamy. “You think he lost to Lexa?”

“Yes!”

“If you think he lost, then tell me, Bellamy Blake, what did he lose?” 

“The fight?” Bellamy replied, as if he were talking to a slightly stupid trainee. 

Ivon raised his brow. “He entered the arena a political prisoner. He walked out a king.”

Bellamy opened his mouth…and then closed it again, a thoughtful expression creeping across his face. In a much more normal speaking voice he said, “I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

Clarke hadn’t either, not quite like that. Not so cleanly or clearly. She’d thought of it only from Lexa’s perspective, she realized, assumed it was her doing alone. Just Lexa seizing yet another opportunity to gain an immediate upper hand, regardless of the long-term consequences. 

Now she considered for the first time the idea that Roan hadn’t been merely a passive tool, but an active agent in his own fate. Those chatty dinners he’d shared with Lexa in the tower took on a whole new meaning as she considered them in this new light.

Ivon relaxed back onto his pillow, his lips twisted into a smug little smile. “Most people don’t.”

They rode in silence until they reached the outskirts of Polis.

“Straight to Echo at the tower? Or Indra first?” Bellamy asked once Nate announced they were entering the city.

“Indra, I think,” Kane said. Clarke wanted to disagree, but looking at Bellamy’s aggressively neutral expression, decided that dealing with Echo could be postponed until morning. 

Indra was not welcoming. She met them in the middle of the Trikru tavern with her fists on her hips and a more terrifying than usual glower on her face.

Clarke was very glad Ivon and Swego had asked to be let out on the edge of Azgeda controlled neighborhoods, and weren’t with them now as they faced the Trikru heda.

Before they were even halfway across the floor to greet her, Indra rocked back on her heels, flung up her arms in dramatic amazement and declaimed for the whole room to hear, “You’ve given him your crippled mechanic? Your most valuable tekspeka?”

“What? No!” Kane exclaimed, completely taken aback at this reception. “Indra! No! We don’t ‘give’ people like that!” 

Her eyebrows nearly met her hairline. “You sanctioned it, then? This formal tie between your clans?”

“No! Really, it’s not…” Kane faltered in the face of Indra’s expression of withering contempt. He raked his hand through his hair, scrubbed his beard, and then dropped his shoulders and tried again, more calmly. “There is no formal tie. Their affair has nothing to do with Skaikru or Azgeda. They chose each other; we had nothing to do with it. No one even knew about it at first.”

“But you didn’t put a stop to it when you did learn of their folly?”

“We couldn’t… we wouldn’t, Indra,” Kane declared.

“You people! What is wrong with you?!” Indra demanded.

“I…. uh….” Kane looked helplessly at Bellamy and Clarke, but Bellamy’s face had gone stoic, his ‘I hate grounder customs’ expression firmly in place, and Clarke had nothing to offer either. 

Nothing in her experience suggested that a love affair with a grounder leader implied anything about political alliances. Roan himself had seemed convinced that his affair with Raven would be short and have little impact beyond their own hearts. As for Clarke's relationship with Lexa, Skaikru joined the coalition as the thirteenth clan well before their love affair moved beyond anything but longing.

And yet, as she recalled with growing unease, that still hadn't stopped Titus from blaming Clarke for weakening Lexa's position with the other clans. From wanting to undo the alliance. From somehow producing an ancient gun and trying to kill her. From killing Lexa instead.

For the first time, Clarke felt an icy trickle of dread run down her spine. It was one thing for Raven and Roan to hook up in Arkadia, quietly and without any fanfare. In Arkadia they could keep Raven safe from everything but disapproving stares. 

But if the news of Raven and Roan had spread as far and wide as Indra was telling them, then they were riding blind into a city every bit as dangerous for them as when it was full of ALIE’s chipped hordes. 

Clarke’s sense of urgency doubled with each new horrifying thought.

“I’m not really following, Indra. I’m sorry,” Kane was saying, turning back to her. “This is so foreign to us. It’s hard for me to understand how a private affair affects clan ties.”

Indra heaved a deep sigh through her dramatically clenched jaw, but she did drop her voice to normal conversational tones to offer a better explanation. “It looks like a pre-marriage alliance. Binding Azgeda and Skaikru.”

“How can it look like that? And to whom? It’s only been public knowledge for less than a week!” Kane was looking a bit wild about the eyes again, Clarke thought.

“To everyone who saw them eating together in Arkadia over the last months, and then carried the news out. For us that looks like a formally approved courtship. Once they openly acknowledged their affair, it appeared to us as though that marked the successful end of negotiations for a more favored position for Skaikru, at the expense of the rest of the clans.”

Kane just threw up his hands as Indra continued talking.

“Marking Skaikru as Azgeda’s favored clan, as long as he retains the crown. And sealing Azgeda as Skaikru’s primary partner. Cutting out the other clans from Skaikru assistance and expertise.”

Kane shook his head, decisively slashing his hands through the air to indicate the strong negative. “No, Indra. It does not. Not for us.”

“Then in that case, I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily be all bad. Such an alliance.” Indra cocked her head, her cool gaze turned thoughtful instead of angry as she speculated aloud. “If Trikru was still Skaikru’s favored clan, then an improved tie between Trikru and Azgeda might be secured that way, with Skaikru as an intermediary.” 

Clarke was pretty sure her head had just spun around her neck in a 360-degree circle. She hoped no one had noticed.

Kane held it together better, simply nodding as though this was all perfectly reasonable. “Then can we rely on your assistance in reaching Roan and Raven?”

Indra looked startled. “Where are they?”

“Here in Polis?” Kane said, trailing off on a faint, “…we hope?”

Indra was shaking her head, looking mildly concerned. “No. Not last I heard. We thought he was still in Arkadia. And I should warn you that some Azgedakru here do not like his general stance towards Arkadia and the Skaikru, or the stories of his Skaikru lover either.”

“I’m aware of the tensions.” 

Clarke thought Kane handled that with remarkable aplomb.

“So this marriage might upset them. If he brings her here without proper ceremony and public declaration.”

“It is NOT a marriage, Indra!” Kane’s voice shook with more than a hint of desperation as he implored Indra to accept this truth.

“Among other things,” he continued more evenly, “we need Raven with us. Where our tech is. There is nothing she can do about the radiation wave from Azgeda.”

“So you don’t sanction her leaving with him? Is he stealing her then? Is that why you don’t know their whereabouts?” Indra raised her brow in surprise, her expression filled with alarm at the very idea of such a theft.

Kane’s mouth fell open, but no words dropped out. Then his expression changed to one of consideration, and before Clarke had time to disappear through some previously undiscovered magical spell of floor-opening power, he’d turned on her. 

“Clarke? Would Raven elope with Roan? Would he take her against her will?”

Now everyone in the room was looking at her.

Clarke experienced a dizzying half-second of wondering how in the hell their lives had transformed into some Regency-Era romance novel, the dashing rogue/noble lord racing for the border with his ladylove uncomfortably jammed into the saddle in front of him. Images courtesy of a lonely childhood spent voraciously reading through the Ark’s digital collection of twentieth-century popular fiction spilling out of whatever memory hole she’d stashed them in. She fleetingly pondered where the grounder equivalent of Gretna Green might be. 

She forced herself back to the present with an impatient headshake and said as firmly as she knew how, “No. They have not eloped. No, he did not take her against her will.”

“How can you be so sure?” Kane asked.

“I’ve spoken with both of them. They’ve assured me that they are aware their affair will be brief and of little significance.” 

Not that either one of them had said anything remotely like that, but Clarke thought it captured the important points well enough.

“So why are you looking for them here?” Indra demanded.

Bellamy chose to intervene at this point. “A hunt went badly. One of Roan’s men pretended to fall before turning on the others, then fled before the quarry was secured.”

Kane jumped right on this, no doubt hoping to divert Indra from contemplating the thought ‘what quarry?’ “We know they were headed for Polis,” he said, “tracking his deserter and hoping to catch him before he causes more trouble. Roan’s skills, Raven’s tech. But we lost touch several hours ago.”

“Better hope he runs into loyal people on his way to the tower, then.”

Kane frowned at that.

“And in the tower?” Clarke asked, not very worried about Roan’s ability to move around Polis unseen if he wanted to. Though more worried than she had been an hour ago.

“His loyalists are there,” Indra replied. “They control most things still, but they are getting restless, too. He’s been gone too long. Making love to a stranger, and not tending to the business of the Commander.”

“We really, truly believe that they are on their way here,” Clarke assured her.

“They?” Indra asked.

“Roan and Raven.” Kane looked as thoroughly confused as Clarke felt.

“You’re expecting Roan and your tekspeka. Together. In Polis. Tonight,” Indra was nodding now as she confirmed her understanding.

“Yes,” Kane said firmly.

“I see.” Indra had resumed her more customary expression. The one that indicated the sky would be falling any minute now.

“We don’t!” Clarke exclaimed, unable to contain herself.

At this interruption, Indra actually managed to look amused, and her tone was almost droll when she replied, “I am aware of that.”

Clarke considered – and rejected – her impulse to scream furiously, cursing grounder fascination with enigma and mysterious and yet cleverly empty proclamations even now, when people’s lives were on the line. When Raven’s life was on the line.

Raven wasn’t just Clarke’s friend or Skaikru’s most valuable tekspeka. She was arguably the most talented mechanical engineer left alive on the whole planet. If something happened to Raven because grounders were still so busy playing at alliances, and one-upmanship, and war, that they couldn’t find their asses with their own hands, none of them might survive what was coming. None of them might survive Praimfaya.

That no one else seemed to grasp that, to understand what they were risking in taking this as nothing but a petty pecking-order dispute and not the survival of the entire human race, was making Clarke’s heart pound and her skin crawl.


	8. Chapter 8

Every step sent an agonizing bolt of pain screaming through Raven’s lower back, but she shuffle-limped into the tower with her chin raised, her lips closed, and on her own two legs. No sticks, fuck you all very much.

Because her sticks got left in the truck and went back to Arkadia with Nate.

Roan did a masterful job of appearing not to drag his steps to hover at her elbow, despite never being more than an arm’s length away. He did catch her gaze a few times and nod encouragingly, concern in his eyes if not on his lips. 

They’d arrived in the tower courtyard after an extremely circuitous but entirely uneventful trip through the restless quiet of a city under a nighttime curfew. 

A nighttime city that was never truly dark thanks to the huge hot flame billowing off the roof of the tower. Or, The Tower. The Flame seemed to demand capital letters for both. 

It also made for a very odd sort of ‘night.’ Under the slowly clouding skies the whole of the valley was dimly illuminated by the reflected orange glow of the flame, just bright enough to create actual areas of deeper shadow where decaying buildings leaned crazily or barricades made of trash turned the ancient street grid into an impossible maze. 

The air itself seemed heavy with it, however scientifically unsupportable Raven knew that to be. She knew that the heat and humidity were due to Polis being close to the sea, nestled down into the deltas of the rivers that flowed out of the mountains to the west, and further protected by a narrow valley. She’d felt the pressure change as soon as they’d begun to descend into the city proper, the damp heat welcome at first after her earlier chill, then growing more and more oppressive the closer they drew to the center.

The huge flame burned silently on, despite its size. 

Raven understood that the silence was because of the distance between herself on the ground and the flame on top of the tower. But there also were no sparks, no sudden flares, and no drifting, burning ash. Nothing to indicate it was wood-fired. So Raven was convinced it had to be natural gas they were flaring off up there. At the rate of thousands of cubic feet per minute. Gas that they could have used for proper street lighting. Or cooking, or power generation, or water pumps. Or any of a thousand other more practical functions.

She’d already swallowed back several blunt observations about the colossal inadequacies of grounder engineering.

When they entered the cavernous lobby of the old Tower, the volume of the noise surrounding her shot up dramatically. Loud voices, raucous laughter, jangling weapons, and stomping boots, all ricocheting off the bare cement walls and broken marble floor, pounding on her ears. The air was thick with the oily smoke of a score of torches, and crowded with the smells of food and rot and a few dozen overheated grounder bodies. It was darker and hotter and even more humid than the courtyard outside. Raven was conscious of fresh sweat prickling under her arms and rolling down her spine to settle at the small of her back.

Echo and two other war leaders Roan had left in command in Polis hadn’t stopped talking over each other and at him since he’d swung down from his horse, but once inside the contained space, their urgent voices and the low guttural Trigedasleng made Raven’s brain hurt. 

She looked over her shoulder, and was startled to see the big doors closing behind them. 

She reached for Roan’s arm. “My gear!” 

One of the Tower guardsmen, who’d taken up his spot as an escort for his king as soon as they entered the building, slapped her hand away, throwing off her balance and causing her to stumble.

Roan caught her upper arm just under the armpit and jerked her back onto her feet and closer into his side, his glare freezing in his tracks the tall Azgedan who had pushed her away. 

“Don’t touch the tekspeka,” Roan snarled, his grip on Raven’s arm so tight it hurt. “No one touches the tekspeka without her permission. And her gear stays with us. Go get it.” When everyone just stared at him, struck dumb with surprise, he barked, “Now!”

The rush of air when someone flung open the doors felt good on her flushed cheeks. She raised her face to the faint current and took a deep, calming breath. Which made her cough because she accidentally inhaled a lungful of oily torch smoke. 

“Raven?” Roan asked, his brow once again creased into worry and concern.

She flapped her free hand. “Fine. I’m fine,” she gasped out around a few more uncontrollable hacks.

The long pause while they waited for her gear allowed her to regain some control over her breathing. Meanwhile, Roan slipped his fingers down her arm to take her hand, which he drew up and wrapped firmly around his bicep and held it there, essentially forcing her to accept his support once they started moving again.

Echo and the other advisors were still talking. They’d barely paused for Raven’s interruption. She ignored them as thoroughly as they were ignoring her and tried her best to lean on Roan as little as possible.

After they’d all piled into the elevator, along with her gear, she was able to drop Roan’s arm and prop herself against the wall instead. This took weight off her leg, the sharp pains in her back easing to a dull ache, and she was able pay a little more attention to her surroundings. 

She’d heard the elevator was hand-cranked, which seemed so overwhelmingly wasteful of human energy, especially now that she’d seen the giant-ass flame shooting off the top of the building, that she hadn’t even truly been able conceive of such a thing. But given the herky-jerky ride that followed the doors screeching closed on their ungreased tracks, she was prepared to believe she’d been told the truth.

Listening in now to the conversation flowing around her, Raven realized that Roan was getting a full, if disorganized, report of the situation in Polis and its surrounding zone, along with news from home. 

None of it sounded good. 

People were much tenser than before, in the city and in Azgeda, and their list of complaints was long. Many were growing uneasy in the wait for the ending of the world, giving those who believed time to worry about their reliance on tech and medicine from Skaikru to see them through. And giving others, those who doubted, larger audiences for their fears of trickery and war and betrayal. The doubters were growing louder, and had gathered larger audiences. Those who were being asked to divert resources from their normal spring routines were growing more frustrated and ripe for alternatives.

The elevator finally creaked to a stop and they arrived at what Raven recognized, mostly from Clarke’s descriptions, as the throne room.

Another group of Azgedans was waiting for them there.

Limping out of the elevator was like hitting another wall of heat, heat produced by the racks and racks and apparently endless racks of pillar candles. So many candles that the hot air they generated actually seemed to be blocking the breeze Raven would have expected to be flowing through all the broken windows at this elevation. Then she felt more heat radiating downward, not at all naturally, and she realized that the great flame itself was distorting the air around the top of the tower.

Sweat started prickling her skin again, this time along her temples and her upper lip and around the base of her neck. The bright, flickering flares of the lit candles swam a little in her vision and she blinked rapidly, trying to clear her head. 

One of the oldest of the men was already stomping towards them. His voice rising and his forked grey beard quivering with every word, he pointed dramatically at Raven and in heavily slurred Trigedsaleng demanded, “Why did you bring that Skaikru whore here? Everyone will believe you’ve made…”

Roan cut him off. “Speak English out of respect for our guest. Skaikru is one of the thirteen clans and Raven Reyes is their chief tekspeka.”

“Respect?” The man’s voice rose to a near howl. And he didn’t switch to English. “A tekspeka cunt who is binding you to her people with her …”

Roan’s big knife embedded itself hilt-deep in the man’s shoulder. The force of Roan’s strike knocked the man back several steps and then down to his knee.

It happened so quickly that Raven hadn’t even seen Roan move. One moment she was trailing half a stride behind him as he led them toward his throne, the next he’d spun sideways, driven his blade into the old man half way through the turn, and ended up in the middle of the room. His heavy shoulders were rolled forward, rising and falling with his every breath, and he was holding his hands wide at his sides, his fingers working as if he was fighting a powerful urge to ball them into fists. He gave every appearance of a man looking forward to the opportunity to break someone’s neck.

Into the silence, Roan said, “I’ve had a very long day. I’m tracking a deserter who fled our hunting party before the mutant-prey was brought down. Endangering his fellow Azedga. Endangering _me_.” The glare he raked across the people waiting for him actually had many of them leaning slightly backward, refusing to move their feet but wanting to ease away at the same time. “I asked you to speak with respect for our guest. Disobey me again and the next time it goes in a throat.”

There was a collective silence around the room. 

“Echo?” Roan said, “My knife?”

Echo, after a startled glance at Roan, nodded once then stooped to rip the knife out of the old man’s shoulder. She wiped the blade down on the man’s jacket while fresh blood drenched his front no matter how hard he pressed the heel of his hand into the now gaping wound, and then she presented it to her king. 

Roan accepted his weapon from Echo and shoved it back into the sheath on his thigh, then caught Raven’s eye as he held out his hand for her. She wanted to ask him what the hell he was about, after a display like that, to go all knights and chivalry on her. But she didn’t. She stepped forward and took his arm again. She didn’t look down at the injured man as she passed him, either.

The gathered advisers and officers fell back to give Roan and Raven a wide margin as they passed. 

At the edge of the platform he paused to ask in a low voice, “Can you stand for a little longer?”

At her jerky nod, he dropped her arm. Then he stepped up to the first level of the platform and drew his sword off his back, turned and sank heavily into the tangled root throne, his naked blade in his lap as he sprawled in his chair and looked out at his advisors. His eyes, Raven thought, were more grey than blue in the hot light of the dozens and dozens of flickering candles. It made him colder. And more dangerous.

“Speak,” he said.

An older woman, her heavily-scarred face gleaming with a sheen of sweat from the heat of the room and her layers of clothes, stepped forward.

“Your majesty,” she said, speaking in English, “Pitr was hasty and intemperate, but our concern is real.”

Raven looked over at white-faced Pitr, who was being helped to his feet by another middle-aged man.

The woman was still speaking. “Rumors of a special alliance between Azgeda and Skaikru, one established through yourself and the tekspeka here,” she jerked her head in Raven’s direction, “have been spreading far and wide. We are concerned that this will,” she paused delicately, “upset more conservative elements in the clans and among our own people.”

“I see,” Roan said.

“Has already upset some factions,” added a younger man, glowering darkly under the scars slashing his temples. “Upset them a lot. They’ve been demanding answers for weeks. And you haven’t given us any!” His frustration made his voice rise to a near wail.

The older woman sent him a quelling glance before returning her attention to Roan. “You arriving here, with the tekspeka in your company, suggests that these rumors are all true. That, without consulting the other clan hedas, or even your own war chiefs,” Raven heard all her offended outrage about this last in her tone, “you have concluded a new special arrangement with Skaikru. An arrangement that cuts out the other clans from Skaikru assistance. One that reduces Azgeda’s power and cedes it to Skaikru!”

Roan frowned impatiently. “There is no such alliance. There was nothing to discuss. These concerns are wasted.”

“Then you must speak louder than the rumors,” she said, rocking back on her heels and raising her chin, relief and urgency both warring in her expression. “You must clarify your position as soon as possible.”

“How long have these rumors been around?” Roan asked.

The younger man’s scowl deepened as he exclaimed incredulously, “Almost two months!” 

Roan blinked, looking as startled as Raven felt. 

Two months was more or less exactly how long ago she’d woken up in his tent outside Arkadia. Woken up naked and sticky and pleasantly sore next to a snoring king after a memorable night of vigorous whisky-fueled sex. If rumors had been circulating that long, it meant that they’d been seen or heard by a member of Roan’s guard that first night. And that guard had wasted no time at all in telling the tale.

Roan turned his head to his spymaster. “Echo?” he growled.

“More or less,” she shrugged. “Two months.”

Roan side-eyed Raven, and then he barked out a sharp, humorless laugh, clearly overtaken by the absurdity of it all. 

“Never was private, was it?” he said to her. 

“Nope,” she replied, tension roiling her gut, her head starting to pound again. She was no politician but she’d heard the woman’s fears clearly enough, and overheard all the reports from his advisors. Raven had no trouble imagining the chaos that could follow if anyone started acting as if the rumors were true. Or even maybe true.

Roan’s expression grew somber, and his eyes were sad when he said, “I’m sorry.”

Raven blinked and swallowed hard against an astonishing desire to burst into tears. “Me, too.”

Roan looked back at the younger man. “It’s true that the tekspeka and I have…” 

He paused to flick his gaze back to Raven, waiting for her brief nod, which she gave without hesitation, there being nothing to gain by denial at this late stage. 

Roan continued, looking back out at his people, “a _personal relationship_. As such, it carries no diplomatic weight with her people. And so there is no need for any change at all in our alliances.”

“Then why is she here?” the woman demanded.

“Chance. The tekspeka was riding with our hunting party. Things went badly and Larkin, Robry, and six others are dead. Brandon broke with the group,” Roan’s voice and countenance were filling with very real anger, and his fist clenched around his sword as he described Brandon’s deceit. “He turned on me in the midst of the struggle, then pretended to be among the dead when he missed. While the great beasts were still attacking our party! While other Azgeda he could have defended were dying!”

Raven thought even poor, dazed Pitr flinched with revulsion at this news. Several of the others present actually gasped aloud in shock and disapproval.

She wondered how they’d react if they realized that the whole thing had been a trap inside a trap, overlapping assassination schemes aimed at wiping out most of the hunting party, along with Roan himself if Brandon had been cleverer, or just luckier. 

Raven liked to think they’d be appalled. But they’d just as likely applaud. Her own people weren’t the slightest bit better. And, given that she was the author of the whole wretched scheme, neither was she.

“I sent the injured back to Arkadia. Raven stayed with me to aid my pursuit of Brandon. He’s here in the city – and,” Roan looked to Echo and the others he’d left in charge, “he needs to be found and brought to judgment as quickly as possible.”

They nodded, acknowledging his order, Echo stepping aside to speak quietly to the guard at the door.

The middle-aged man supporting Pitr sneered, “You expect us to believe that? That this cripple could help you track a warrior like Brandon?”

“Yes,” Roan rolled his head towards the two men, looking up at the speaker from under his dark brows, his scars pale against his tanned skin and the sharp line of his dark beard.

He looked more predator than warrior, like a wolf or a fox made man. Raven wondered how his questioner couldn’t see it. 

“It’s a true statement,” Roan said, all silky and soft. “But more important,” he leaned forward, ever so slightly, pulling his feet back beneath him, and looked his man straight in the eye, “I’m your king.”

The man’s face contorted in anger, and he spat in Trigedasleng, “She’s clinging to you like a wood tick, and you’re too besotted to see it. A wet hole for your dick, and more power to her clan.” 

His own face twisting into a furious snarl, Roan uncoiled from his throne, charged off the dais and drove his sword into the man’s chest, until the tip protruded from his back. Then Roan raised his foot, planted it on the man’s belly and yanked his sword free, adding a vicious twist as he did. 

As she watched the dark red lifeblood spurt out of the startled man’s gaping mouth and soak his shirt, glistening thickly in the flickering candlelight, Raven’s belly cramped up in a spasm of nausea. Then the lights of the candles began to smear together, pulsing and bending with her pounding heart. 

“Roan?” she said, feeling the top of her head rising toward the ceiling and the ground receding under her feet, “I’m going to faint now.”

And then she did.

~~~~

“Got them!” Bellamy’s whisper carried just far enough for Clarke to hear.

Clarke sagged back onto her heels in relief, flashing him a quick thumb’s up sign and mouthing, “Yay!”

The two of them were crouched up under the eaves of a rickety old building on the very edge of Indra’s territory, or what they hoped was Indra’s territory. They were close enough to see figures moving in the candlelit windows of the Commander’s Tower, frustratingly far enough away that they couldn’t see the building base or any of the ground approaches through the old, crooked streets.

But they could feel the tension in the city all around them.

Indra’s startling greeting about Roan and his alliance with Skaikru, one sealed by his marriage to the Skaikru tekspeka Raven Reyes, had just been the beginning.

While Clarke and Kane had continued to argue fruitlessly with Indra, the first of what would be nearly half a dozen small clan hedas had begun appearing at Indra’s headquarters. They’d slipped in one by one, hoods and scarves drawn against the night despite the heat and humidity, accompanied by a few hyper-alert guards, strung tight as bowstrings as they entered the Trikru zone.

They’d wanted news and assurances of Skaikru promises, all of them certain of the same thing Indra had been. That Skaikru had secretly married their tekspeka to King Roan, aiming to cut out the rest of the coalition when Praimfaya returned.

“How did you even know we were here?” Kane had asked, bewildered, when the third heda had arrived in as many minutes.

“You have the only machine-powered vehicles in the coalition,” Indra had murmured. Her tone so dry it nearly created a small drift of sand around her chair. “Everyone along your path heard and saw you enter the city, the lights of the truck as distinct as the sound.”

Around the same time, Trikru night watchmen had begun returning with news of a flurry of activity in the Azgeda controlled parts of Polis. They’d carried rumors rippling outward from the tower and across the city, jubilant whispers that had declared that the King had returned and all would be well.

Clarke had barely the time to ask after any news of Raven when another patrol arrived. Plunging her soaring hopes back to despair, these new patrol members had insisted that there had been a coup, and the King and his new wife were being held captive. Or worse, were already dead.

“That’s not possible!” Clarke had declared hotly, cutting through Indra’s questions. “She’s not his wife!”

The man had cast a baleful glance Clarke’s way and snarled, “That’s what the rumors say. His Skaikru wife. To seal his new Skaikru alliance and cut out the rest of the clans.”

“They are NOT married,” Clarke had exclaimed, her grip on her mounting alarm for Raven’s safety slipping by the minute. She knew. She remembered. The terror of being hunted by Grounders determined to bring her down. “And Roan would never surprise the coalition like that!” she’d added, for good measure.

“If a Skaikru woman turned his head and his heart away from the coalition and toward her own people, we have no surety of what Roan might do,” the new heda from Trishanakru had replied, her expression somewhere between contempt and fear. 

Then more scouts had arrived to report that Azgeda patrols were conducting a house-to-house search inside their own district. For loyalists or traitors, no one knew.

Clarke had wanted to go straight to the tower then, sure that she could gain admission and straighten everything out immediately. “Roan will see me!”

The other hedas had gasped in varying degrees of horrified betrayal.

“You will not be so foolish, Wanheda!” Indra had snapped. “That would confirm everyone’s fears and suspicions. Not calm them!”

At that point, Indra had informed Kane that they should keep to the quarters she’d assign to them, well out of sight, and wait until daylight and fresh news. “Then we will approach the tower, together, all of us after the first bells. Seven hedas together, seeking an audience with the King Commander.”

As soon as their guide-guard left them at the guesthouse several blocks further away from the tower than even Indra’s headquarters, Clarke had whirled on Kane. “We have to get out into the city now, and look for Raven! She’s in terrible danger!” 

Kane had raised his brow at her, taken aback by her passionate declaration. 

“We can’t afford to loose her. And she’s our friend!” Clarke had insisted.

“We agreed we’d trust Roan,” Kane had reminded her. 

“We have the scanner,” Clarke had shot back, incredulous that Kane was so reluctant and feeling increasingly frantic over the fate of Arkadia’s best mechanic and most brilliant mind. And her friend. Alone in a hostile city, with only a compromised lover to protect her. “We can find her. If she needs help, we can give it. We can’t just wait for news! Anything could happen overnight!”

Finally Kane had sighed and looked at Bellamy. “Clarke will go anyway, so go with her. Keep out of sight. Keep safe. And return before the night starts to fade, whether or not you’ve found Raven.”

Clarke and Bellamy had made their way here, clinging to the shadows and freezing at every stray noise. It had taken them quite a long time, and they didn’t have much more night left before they would have to return to Kane.

“Where are they?” Clarke mouthed, barely making a sound, feeling almost giddy with their success at finding Raven and Roan. “Are they still together?” 

“Yes, signals still smushed together, not moving. High up. Throne room, maybe?” Bellamy looked worried, then added in a rush, “and you know the beacons would be transmitting just the same if they’ve taken them off. Or if they’re dead, right?”

“Or sleeping,” Clarke whispered. “Like sensible people at this time of night.”

She saw the white gleam of Bellamy’s teeth. “Okay. Sleeping.”

Clarke scowled at him. “Ha. Okay. Or not sleeping. Smushed together.”

Bellamy’s snigger was faint, but audible all the same. Clarke rocked to bump his shoulder, her lips twisted into a grimace. Now did not strike her as the time to indulge in juvenile humor.

“I wish we had a microphone on them,” she whispered. “One of Raven’s. Just to be sure they aren’t dead.”

Bellamy turned to look at her, his dark eyes reflecting the light of the tower flame. “Do you think the one she put on Brandon is still transmitting? Could we use this,” he wiggled the scanner, “to find him?”

Clarke combed her brain for whatever tiny bits of electronics she could still recall from lessons she hadn’t enjoyed a lifetime ago. She turned up nothing. “Maybe. If Monty or Wick were here. Or Raven herself. But without any of them? I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Me, either,” Bellamy’s soft voice was full of regret. “Okay. We know they’re here. They made it this far. Assume the best, right? We should start heading back for Kane.”

They were gathering their things when Bellamy touched her arm, his hand raised for stillness and silence.

Clarke had heard nothing, but now that she was still, she heard it, too. Quiet booted steps in the street below. Quick whispered commands in Trigedasleng, too far away and too fast for her to be sure of the words, much less the clan.

As one, they sank back down onto their heels, shoulders brushing, still poised to run if they had to, but better positioned to be still.

A few minutes later, long minutes that felt like hours to Clarke, they heard the footsteps leave the street below. “Another quarter of an hour,” Bellamy murmured into her ear. “Make sure they’re all gone.”

Clarke nodded. 

The minutes trickled on. Gradually Clarke realized that she was alone, in the dark, with a Bellamy who was as stuck as she was. Who couldn’t run away no matter what topic she ambushed him with. No matter how much he’d like to avoid it.

“Bellamy?” she said, barely moving her lips.

“Yes?”

“Do you think they have a real connection? Raven and Roan?

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” she fluttered her fingers in the air, “emotional as well as physical?”

“I haven’t given it that much thought.”

“Bellamy – it’s important. This has all spun out so fast, gotten so dangerous so quickly, but I don’t know what’s at the heart of it for them. Where their hearts are.”

“Does it matter?” Even his whisper sounded impatient.

“It would matter if it were you!”

“What?”

“Think of all the things you’ve done for love of Octavia! What if Roan or Raven would do that kind of thing for each other?”

This was a low hit, and Clarke knew it. But she also thought he’d answer.

Which he did, after a few heartbeats that echoed very loudly in her ears. 

“You’re right,” he breathed. “I have done a lot of reckless, stupid things for Octavia. Which is why I know those kinds of attachments are dangerous.”

“And if they have one?”

“Then we’re all screwed.”

“Bellamy! Raven has saved us time and again. And I’ve come to trust Roan, too.”

“They have to choose, Clarke. Their people or each other. Right now, they can’t have both.”

“Why not?” Clarke whispered, thrilled to have so quickly found a way to the heart of the matter. “Why can’t we find a way for them to have both? So nobody has to do anything stupid or reckless? Them, or anybody else?” 

“Are you serious?”

“This world needs more love, not less!” 

After a startled pause, Bellamy cracked a faintly astonished smirk, his teeth visible in the gloom. “Who are you and what did you do with my Clarke Griffin?”

Faintly offended at his shock, Clarke folded her arms across her chest and rocked away from him. “I’m right here.” She sounded petulant, and she knew it, but she didn’t care.

“What happened to ‘love is weakness’?” he asked her, his brow lifted quizzically but his tone gentler now.

“I was an idiot is what happened. And maybe if I hadn’t been, we’d all be in better shape now,” she whispered, so fucking tired of having to face all her own mistakes again and again with no apparent way to ever make them better.

After another long pause, Bellamy spoke again, his quiet voice soothing in her ear. “Don’t hog all the blame, Clarke. We all played our parts.”

She heard all his pain and all his sorrows for things done and things undone in the last year. Hers were not the only regrets. Not by half. She switched the subject back to her present concerns. “What if…they are each other’s person?”

“Person?”

“You know. The one person they’ll be most happy with, the one person they’ll do anything for?”

When he finally answered, she could barely hear him. 

“I have to believe there is more than one, Clarke.”

She remembered, too late, Gina Martin, and flailed to make it better. “Right. Like my mom and Kane. I know she loved my dad. But he’s gone. And she and Kane found something new.”

“Raven and Roan will too.” Bellamy’s tone was heavy with finality.

Clarke seized on the small concession anyway. “So you do think they have something!”

“I’m not blind, Clarke. He watches her like she’s the most fascinating person he’s ever met. She looks back at him with her eyes all wide and startled, like she’s going to burst into laughter and confetti at any moment.” 

Even at the barest of whispers, Clarke was sure she heard his tone soften, as though he were actually happy for his friend, despite everything. 

“Anyone who’s seen them together knows it too. As we learned tonight.” His tone firmed right back up, disapproval roaring back in. “And it can’t go on. Not right now. Maybe not ever. They’re both smart and responsible enough to know it. They’ll do the right thing.”

That was so much more than Clarke expected to get from him, this cracked whisper that duty must trump any personal feelings, that she had no words ready for a response. Any response.

Into the silence, the sound of booted feet coming up the stairs, however quietly, was very, very loud.

They froze.

Echo kom Azgeda appeared in the doorway, her sword in her hand, raised and ready. She saw them and exhaled heavily, with what Clarke felt was unnecessarily theatrical exasperation, and she wondered in that moment if Echo and Indra were related by more than culture

“Wanheda. Bellamy. I should have known. What are you doing here?”

Bellamy tried a winsome smile. Even Clarke thought it looked terrible and fake. 

“Echo!” He said as warmly as possible.

“Bellamy,” she replied, her tone flat and even. She pointed her naked sword at them. “What are you doing here?” 

“We’ve been looking for Raven,” he said. “She’s wearing a beacon that our radio scanner can pick up on.” He patted his pouch.

Echo dropped her sword arm to her side. Not, Clarke noted, sheathing it. But no longer in a position ready to attack. “Find her?” she asked, her head cocked inquiringly. 

“Yes,” Bellamy slid his eyes toward Clarke. Clarke nodded at him to keep talking. However fraught his connection to Echo, it was also real and stronger than hers. He elaborated, “She’s in the tower.”

“Yes. She is. She’s with Roan now.” Echo’s tone was impossible to decipher, but immediately left Clarke feeling uneasy, too many unknowns, too many things unsaid.

“Can you take us to her? Is she all right? Is she safe?” Bellamy and Clarke’s questions tumbled out on top of each other.

“She is quite safe, at the moment. And uninjured, as far as I know,” Echo replied. “And no, I can’t take you to her.”

“Why not?” Clarke demanded, faster than Bellamy could.

Echo turned her head to face Clarke fully. “This is not a safe place for you to be. You should go back to your Trikru allies.”

Bellamy glowered at Echo over crossed arms. “I thought we were Azgeda allies, too?”

After inspecting him up and down, her interest more detached than personal, Clarke thought, Echo deliberately turned away from him to look at her. “Are you planning to marry your tekspeka to Roan and cut out the other clans from your assistance?”

“No!” Clarke cried in a quiet whisper.

“Why does everyone keep asking us that?” Bellamy added, his frustration apparent in every line of his body.

“That is an explanation for another day, Bellamy Blake,” Echo said, her voice thick with amusement.

Clarke held onto her temper with difficulty. She was so damn tired of grounder humor at her own, and Skaikru’s, expense. 

“In the meantime,” Echo continued, “you shouldn’t be here. I’ll see you escorted to safety.”

“We need to get to Raven!” Clarke insisted, her earlier panic roaring back at Echo’s intransigence. She could be concealing anything. Raven could be lying hurt, or injured, or dead.

Echo’s good humor vanished. “You CAN’T be here right now. You must wait to be summoned by the king.”

“Why?” Bellamy asked, straining, to Clarke’s ears anyway, to hold onto a reasonable tone.

“If you’re found here, your presence will make it look like the king is lying, you stupid fools.”

“Lying about what?” Clarke asked, trying as hard as she could to remain composed.

“He has denied making any special deals with Skaikru as a result of his _personal relationship_ with your tekspeka.”

“He hasn’t!” Clarke insisted, even as she wondered to whom he’d denied making deals. Or if they’d believed him. “No special deals because of Raven!”

“You being here? With your tech?” Echo gestured contemptuously at the bag Bellamy was carrying, “Makes it look like he did.”

“Echo, we’re telling the truth.” Bellamy insisted.

Echo rolled her eyes. “I know you are. You sky people almost never lie directly if you can help it. It would be easier if you did. Instead you’re all shades of truth, bending it to a lie when needed.”

Clarke and Bellamy exchanged uncomfortable glances. 

“Come,” Echo said, gesturing impatiently at the stairs with her blade.

“You can take us back to Kane, at the Trikru guest house.” Bellamy’s concession was barely polite.

“I can, can I?” Echo raised one brow, a dead-on impression of Roan at his most supercilious.

“Yes,” Clarke said, stepping forward to show compliance, swallowing back her resentment at Echo’s attitude, remembering too late Echo’s sword at her throat in the square the last time she was in Polis. “Please.”

Echo shrugged, then indicated they should take the stairs down in front of her. “This way.”

They slipped through the silent streets, Echo somehow knowing the darkest, quietest paths, until in hardly any time at all, a squad consisting of none but huge Azgeda warriors surrounded them.

“Echo?” Bellamy asked, plainly shocked.

“I promised you safety until you’re summoned by the king. I’ve decided that all of Polis will be safest with you two securely in lockup.” She held out her hand, “Your weapons, and your tech, please.”

Clarke met Bellamy’s eyes. Fighting back now was stupid. He nodded almost imperceptibly, then carefully and slowly reached for his gun. “I expect it back,” he said to Echo. “I’m trusting it to you, personally.”

“Fine,” Echo said, and dropped it into the small pack she carried on her own back. “I have it. The rest, please? Including your tracking machine.”

Once disarmed, they were quickly escorted to the cells below the tower. Echo slid aside the door to a small chamber with solid walls. A place no one would be able to see into other than through the small window in the door. “Rest now, as much you can. Food will be brought later. Once the day watch begins.”

Resigned, Clarke followed Bellamy into the dark little cell.

“Echo?” Clarke asked impulsively, as Echo was stepping back to roll the door closed.

Echo paused. “Yes?”

“Why do you all hate us so much? I mean, even before we landed, you hated us.”

Echo regarded her quietly for a long moment. Then she said, “Becca Pramheda told us we must watch for the people coming from the sky. That they would destroy all that we have made. And here you are.”

“It’s not us!” Bellamy said, his voice low and urgent.

Echo nodded. Her expression, Clarke thought, was almost sad when she spoke again. “I believe you. Roan believes you. I think Indra believes you. So do many, many others. But all we have will be destroyed all the same.”

The bolts clanged shut with a noisy finality.


	9. Chapter 9

She hadn’t really fainted, Raven decided. It was more of a swoon.

She’d been conscious again by the time her ass hit the floor, her head saved from the same fate by Roan’s chest as he caught her and eased her down.

Either way, the confrontation between Roan and his advisors was over with her collapse. Roan scooped her up in his arms, announced that he would send word as soon as Brandon was arrested and brought before him, and strode out of the room.

Raven would have protested, but to what end she didn’t know. So she didn’t say anything at all. Besides, his arms were strong and his shoulders were broad. He could do this and she could drop her head under his jaw, close her eyes so as to avoid the various expressions of impatience and disgust on all the Azgeda in the room, and let him whisk her and her embarrassment away. 

He carried her down a single flight of steps and then a short hall to a fancy set of doubled doors. Raven wondered as they passed through if these been Lexa’s quarters. If so, they must have been stripped as soon as she died, for these rooms were somehow unmistakably masculine and all Roan. Shadowy, spare, nearly empty spaces. No personal additions at all. The temporary home of someone just passing through.

It was very soothing after all the candles and torches and the noise and the smoke and the smells and the loud angry people with their gaudy, heavy clothing and rattling jewelry and shiny deadly weapons.

“I can still walk, you know,” she said, once the outer doors thunked closed behind them. 

“Walking hurts you right now.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t.”

“It’s not far.”

And it wasn’t.

His bedroom was less empty than the rest, dominated by a large fur-heaped bed with an old iron gate repurposed as an elegantly architectural, if very large and heavy, headboard. There were a few low tables, a pair of deep leather chairs with low backs curving into high arms, and a low brazier, fortunately not lit. The night air remained as warm and humid as when they’d ridden into the city, despite the late hour.

Someone had come through and lit the few candles, for which she was grateful. Her bags of gear were piled in a neat stack against the wall in a far corner, away from the outer wall and its broken windows.

Roan stopped in the middle of the room and carefully let her down onto her feet. Waiting until she stepped back to drop his hands. 

Brushing stray tendrils of her hair off her forehead, his fingers slow as he tucked them behind her ear, he asked, “You okay?”

“Yes,” she assured him. “I am.”

“Would you like anything? Food, water, a chance to bathe?”

“Bathe?” She glanced around, hardly daring to believe he was serious and looking for a bowl and a pitcher of tepid water. 

Turned out there was an actual bathroom – an adjoining room featuring a large central tiled tub that began filling quickly with steaming water as soon as Roan closed the drain and opened the taps.

“Don’t look so shocked,” he said, standing up and drying his hands on his trousers.

Raven tried to look as blank as possible. “What?”

“I know Polis is primitive by your standards, but there’s a huge flame on top of this building. Hot water is easy.”

“How do you get water up there to heat?” She was already sinking down onto the lowest step of the tub’s platform, working at the buckles on her brace. She couldn’t wait to shed her clothes.

“Rain. Plus the elevator.”

“That elevator.” She’d huffed and rolled her eyes before she had time to think better of it.

“I know.” He stepped over to a basket with a hinged lid and pulled out a few rough towels. “I’d commission you to fix the city, if there were any point to it.”

“I…” Raven’s tongue got all tangled as she absorbed that easy offer. He’d just _give her_ the city to fix. It was his, more or less, for as long as he could hold it, and he could just…. make it so. 

Only, there wasn’t any point. Not now. Another dream she’d never even known she could have danced across her mental landscape and then vanished into the night, leaving only a faintly sparkling trail of half-formed designs in its wake.

“It’s fine. Polis is just fine how it is, I’m sure,” she said, not believing a word and filled with regret for something that had not, and would not now ever, exist.

He shook his head at her. “I’m not Trikru, Raven. Polis is a dump, full of garbage and broken windows. There are a lot of reasons Azgedakru is twice the size of the rest of the coalition put together. Not living in decaying buildings open to all weather and surrounded by trash piles is part of why. And the expressions on your face while we were riding in …” his eyes were twinkling now as he grinned easily at her, “were revealing.”

“I didn’t say anything!” she exclaimed, her guilty conscience prickling all the same.

“Didn’t have too. You kept looking up at the flame, curling your lip, and then rolling your eyes.”

“Well… it sucks!” Indignation wiped away her guilt. “All that energy just boiling off uselessly into the sky! And where does it all come from and why haven’t you run out?”

“None of these are questions I can answer! Sorry.” 

As she settled into the hot bath, able to stretch out to her full length with room to spare, the muscles in her back already relaxing, it was so nice she actually whimpered. “Oh, my.”

“I’ll go get food, and I need to speak with Echo about the search for Brandon.” When she tilted her head to look up at him, he leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Don’t drown while I’m gone.”

She stayed in the tub until the water turned cool, soaping and rinsing her hair twice just for the pleasure of it. When she was done, Roan still hadn’t returned. So she wrapped herself in towels and hobbled out to curl into one of the leather chairs, already positioned to look out over the city. 

The city that, in a slightly different world, might have been hers to play with.

Staring out over the wreck of Polis, Raven drifted into jumbled half-dreams about what sort of place she’d build here if she could. A city of sturdy stone and brick buildings with solar roofs and running water. Roads that hugged the shape of the valley, linked by gracefully curved bridges. Bright blue lakes and parks full of towering trees and glowing flowers, twinkling with lights at night and filled with smiling people during the day. 

Only all of her beautiful city was menaced by paunas charging through the gates and ripping down her sturdy buildings. Traitors lurking in alleys, smashing windows and tossing trash into the streets. Bald-headed priests dragging nuclear power plants filled with poison behind them as they crept closer and closer to the city walls. Old people who shook their fists and called her vile things as they tore down her lights almost as fast as she could string them up. 

“Raven?” The sound of Roan’s voice softly calling her name roused her. She struggled to sit up, shaking out her hair and scrubbing at her head, clearing out her increasingly morbid imaginings. 

He was carrying a basket of bread and meat and cheese, and several bottles of what turned out to be water. 

“I was hoping for booze,” she admitted, after her first careful sip. “To take the edge off.” Her hip, or her dreams, or both.

“I have something better for pain.” He reached into the basket and pulled out a small cloth wrapped bundle. Dropping into the chair across from her own he pushed the package over the low table towards her, indicating with a quick nod that she should open it. Pulling back the rough fabric, Raven discovered a brightly colored glass pipe, hardly larger than her palm, and a small round tin container, decorated with a complex pattern of raised lines. 

“I don’t know the English words,” he added apologetically.

“Cannabis!” she breathed after taking a tentative sniff of the contents of the tin, the formal name the farm station had used tripping easily off her lips. “I didn’t know you had this! Jasper will be over the moon when I tell him. Abby Griffin, too.”

“The healer wanted me to take the tea, but if you can handle the smoke, this is faster.” He frowned then. “Should I ask for the tea? Can you smoke?”

“I’ve smoked before,” she assured him. 

Once, but he didn’t have to know that. The Ark medical staff had gone in for highly refined THC pills, the dealers usually went with edibles or oils. Only the deep black market, or stupid fucks from factory – in truth all mostly the same people – went with inhaling. Smoke being almost entirely an anathema in a compromised oxygen environment like the Ark had been. Which was, naturally, a big part of the thrill.

“But,” honesty and fear of awkwardness prompted her to add, “not with a pipe like this.”

“That’s fine, I can show you.” He retrieved the pipe and the tin, then talked her through the simple steps. Lifting up a thin taper from the basket, he lit it with the nearest candle. “You want just enough heat to make smoke,” he said, crouching down beside her so she could see what he was doing. 

Then he demonstrated with a deep and practiced inhale, his eyelids flickering as he held the smoke for what seemed an impossibly long time, finally letting it trickle slowly out of his mouth and nose. 

Her own first puff was tentative, and still made her cough. 

“You sure I shouldn’t ask for the tea?” he asked, watching her doubtfully while she tipped the water bottle too far and dribbled water down her chin and onto her chest.

Raven narrowed her eyes and raised her free hand to wiggle her fingers, indicating he should give the pipe back to her. 

He shrugged, lit it again with a slightly less-deep breath, and then passed it over. 

Her next attempt was much more respectable. 

“Got it?” he asked.

“Yep,” she nodded, and reached for the taper. “Got it.” 

“I’m going to wash. Don’t forget to eat, and don’t smoke more than what’s already in the pipe.”

She didn’t forget to eat and she didn’t touch the tin of cannabis, but in between small, bulky sandwiches, she did smoke every bit out of the small bowl, until there was nothing left but a pile of grey ash. The sharp ache in her hip and back smoothing out and then dissipating further with each slow exhale. 

Roan reappeared at some point, his hair wet and dripping down his naked chest, another of the rough towels wrapped around his waist. His feet were bare and startlingly pale against the old cement floor. In an astonishingly short time he finished all the food that remained. 

“How’s your hip?” he asked when the food was gone, slouching deeper into his chair before tipping his chin back to drain the water from the last bottle.

Raven lifted her head from where she was resting it against her arm and smiled at him, her hand drifting through the softly humid air. “Good,” she told him. “I feel really good.” 

The cannabis had done its work. The pain had vanished. Out of her consciousness if not out of her bones. Her arms and legs felt a bit like they were floating and her head was full of bright soap bubbles, making it wobble just little when she turned her neck. Her skin felt tender, and her nipples were hard, rising with every breath to brush against the rough fabric of the towel that she was abruptly very conscious was all that she was wearing. 

She watched his throat work as he swallowed, and admired his corded forearm and the careless bulge of his bicep. His hair had started to dry while he ate, and now it was all rough and wavy, falling forward from behind his ears to curl loosely about his jaw.

Raven suddenly wanted nothing more than to sink her fingers into it, push his head down between her legs and come around his face. Action followed impulse and she wiggled around to raise her knees, dangling her legs over the arms of her chair and tugging the towels aside, opening wide her already slick cunt. Stretching her arms above her head, she arched her back so as to better display her tits, feeling heavy and full on her chest while her nipples pinched tight in anticipation. Then she dropped her arms to either side of her knees and said, “Eat me out?” 

His expression had barely changed as she moved, but the languid ease of his sprawl vanished with her invitation. 

Setting the bottle carefully down next to his chair, he lifted his foot and shoved the low table aside to clear the small space between them. The loud wood-on-concrete squeal echoed in the large room, drawing her eyes away from him. 

When she looked back, he was already in front of her, roughly bundling his own towel to drop it to the floor, a pad for his knees. 

He met her eyes once as he settled down, his pupils blown so large in the strange half-night of Polis that they nearly obscured the pale blue of his irises. His loose hair softened the harsh planes of his face, reminding her that he wasn’t really as much older than she as he sometimes seemed. 

Then he lifted his hands to rest on her inner thighs, rolling her hips back to pull her open still further. The slow grin he flashed up at her, full of delayed promises, made her pussy clench on empty air, slick wet pushing out along her folds.

She sank her fingers into his hair, half-pulling, half-guiding him down. He was already sliding his hands closer, using his thumbs to roll her soft flesh, massaging blood into her clit, making her hips twitch and her whole cunt throb. 

Then he pulled her labia apart with this thumbs and his tongue touched her, pressed into her, lapped at her skin, curling along her folds with long steady strokes that made her sigh and moan. 

When he pulled back the hood and then closed his mouth around her exposed clit, sucking hard, her whole body jerked in his hands. 

Using the balance provided by her knees hooked over the chair arms, she squeezed her thigh and ass muscles tight, lifting her cunt higher, pressing harder against his mouth. He slipped his hands up under her ass, offering support and sensation both as he continued to suckle hard at her clit.

Her future orgasm started gathering under her belly, hot and heavy. Her whole pussy throbbed with it, pulsing along with her hips. 

Her grip in his hair her anchor, she let her body dictate her pace, quick little hip flicks, slower rocking twists, pulling back and pressing in, keeping up a steady back and forth against his mouth until her whole body felt bright with tension, sighing and moaning as she moved with him and against him. 

"Just a little more," she murmured, "just a little more." 

He responded with the quick, light strokes she’d demanded that first night in his tent, never flagging, never pushing past pleasure and into pain. 

Her spine bowed tighter and she hooked her head over the back of the chair for greater stability as she rocked in his hands. Her toes curled and her hips moved faster. 

Then he pushed two fingers into her, fucking gently in and out until they were deep enough he could press upward into the base of her clit, tapping quickly there, beating out a counterpoint to his tongue on the exposed tip.

Her hips jerked harder, her heavy panting turning into a tight, high pitched keening.

Clutching at his head, she rode his fingers and pressed against his flickering tongue. Her whole body was rigid now, heavy with the pressure that was building between her legs and deep in her groin. She was straining so hard she was forgetting to breathe. Then she felt a new liquid heat flooding into her pussy, right under the surface of her skin, swelling her folds, and she knew she was close to tipping over the edge. 

She was rocking so fast now she was nearly vibrating, pushing herself deeper onto his fingers, lifting her hips higher as he sucked harder on her clit, gasping out a last frantic, “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

Stars danced in the edges of her eyes when she came, thick cum squirted out of her cunt, and her abs contracted so fast she rocked the chair, the wooden feet clattering loud on the old cement floor.

With his eyes on hers, he slowly drew his fingers out of her, then pushed his palms flat across her pussy, smearing her cum and her wet into her skin, pressing upward to grasp her tits, kneading them under his palms, twisting her nipples with his fingers, while he leaned forward to kiss her. 

Her body still throbbing with unspent aftershocks, she tasted herself on his lips. Falling back into the chair and pulling him with her, sweeping his tongue with hers, she chased down every drop and then licked his beard clean.

Once she released her grip on his jaw to stroke down his back, he pressed quick light kisses against the angle of her neck, teased the lobe of her ear with his nose, then drifted down her collar bone to pay more attention to her breasts. He sucked hard at them, each in turn, drawing as much of them as he could into his mouth, the beating of his tongue sending almost painful twists of pleasure to spiral straight down to her dripping, needy cunt. 

She bucked up harder against him, a little more desperate, a little more impatient. When she felt the head of his cock bumping against her, she drew her legs up around his waist and pressed her heels hard into his ass. Letting him know he could fuck right on into her any damn time he pleased.

What he pleased to do, it turned out, was tease her. Drawing his cock along the crack of her ass, against her thighs, up over her belly, chuckling at her attempts to hold him steady, to force herself up and onto the dick he was putting everywhere but inside her.

“Damn it, Roan,” she muttered, scowling to make sure she didn’t beg by accident. “I know you want to fuck me.” 

He lifted his head to grin down at her. “I am fucking with you,” he said.

She opened her lips to complain, but she couldn’t decide if he’d meant what he said, or if he’d misspoken, or if he was flat out messing with her, and then he covered her mouth with his own. This time it was his tongue sweeping hers, pressing in and out, a tantalizing charade of what she really wanted.

“Please,” she finally sighed against his beard, caressing the hard lines of the scars on his back, pressing her feet into his ass, “please.”

He met her eyes for a moment, the undeniably teasing glint fading to something warmer, and then he pushed his rigid cock into her, easy and shallow. 

Her insides all melted, everything opening up loose, a low hum escaping from her throat as her eyes drifted closed again. He gripped her waist and pulled her ass closer to the edge of the seat. Her spine curved into the chair, giving him space to sink his cock deeper into her with each slow flex of his hips, filling her up and forcing her down, the wet suction of pressing in and pulling out squelching loud in the quiet room. 

Her cunt seemed to gradually swell along with his dick, clinging tighter around him as she adjusted to the new position, tensing her inner muscles as hard as she could, gripping his shoulders and pressing her heels into his back to push him deeper. 

Gasping in time with his thrusts now, she urged him on, hands and feet, kissing whatever patch of skin she could pull herself up to reach, holding onto him as hard as she could with her internal muscles. 

It still wasn’t enough, so she flung her hands behind her head to grab the back of the chair – bracing herself for more leverage, more power as she pushed back into him and onto him – squirming best she could to press her throbbing cunt against whatever she could find.

But it was getting more and more difficult to find any purchase at all. Their bellies and backs were growing slick with sweat, anywhere flesh touched flesh moisture gathered, so much sweat it had begun to drip down their arms and chins and was falling into their eyes. 

Her legs finally slipped entirely away from around his waist and she cried out in dismay. 

He caught her calves, lifting and sliding them up and over his damp shoulders and leaning closer, pressing her thighs tight against her sides, pushing her deeper into the old chair. Pinned beneath him now, Raven was reduced to shallow panting, her breath whistling in her chest as she cried out with every deep thrust.

Her knees framing his ears, he reached up behind her, caging her inside his arms and pressing his hands over hers, interlocking their fingers, seeking leverage of his own. His grip grew painfully tight as he began slamming into her with such force the chair itself started creaking loudly under the strain.

For one crazed moment she thought he might be capable of ramming his dick straight through her ribs to pierce her heart. 

Then everything inside her was pulling in and tightening up, and sweat or tears or both were leaking down her cheeks, her pleasure so sharp and deep with every thrust it felt like pain. 

When her second orgasm crashed through her, she shook so much she actually did burst into tears.

He pulled back in alarm, her legs sliding down his wet arms to collide with the sides of the chair. “Raven?”

Gulping a shuddering breath, ignoring the tears on her face and the tremors from her climax pilling up in her belly, she scrambled to sit up, almost ripping her skin free from where it had stuck, through heat and sweat, to the old leather. “I’m fine,” she gasped, “I’m good.” 

And then she rocked forward to kiss him. Seizing his jaw in her hands to drag her open mouth against his, licking along the high arch of his cheeks, pressing kisses to his brow and his scars, winding her arms round his neck. Her whole body was still revving, hot and tight, an engine too hot to cool down, desire that was starting to leak back out of her as squeaky little moans and harder, and needier, kisses.

He caught her chin with his hand. “Raven?” he asked again, the too-familiar worry lines reappearing between his brows.

“I’m fine.” She shook her head at him, grinning sloppily then twisting her chin to nip sharply at his thumb with her teeth, darting out her tongue to lick the sting away. “I’m still good. Really good.”

Also still needy. So, so needy. Her body wasn’t done, her throbbing clit still aching, her cunt still dripping, wetness pooling under her ass. 

She slid her hand down his chest to seize his cock, slick with their sex and still mostly hard, and was rewarded by a low grunt. Wrapping her free arm all the way around his shoulders she slipped out of the chair and onto his thighs, opening her self up, guiding him in, rocking down to press herself as close into and onto him as she could get. 

“Don’t stop now,” she ordered, her hips already moving, just before she kissed him again, “Don’t stop. Not now. Not yet.”

This time he obliged her without any further teasing, his hands gripping tight on her waist, holding her steady as he pumped into her. 

Raven closed her eyes and let her forehead fall into his shoulder, sinking down as far as she could go, determined to grind out one last orgasm, no matter how small, before they were done.

His grasp on her hips grew fiercer as his own climax hovered near. She raised her head and saw that his face was twisted in effort, felt the tension in his shoulders and his back and realized he was trying to hold on, hold out, long enough for her to finish. 

She hooked her heels behind him, settling deep enough onto his cock that she could feel his sack bumping her ass. With her mouth close to his ear, she whispered, “Let it go, babe. Let it go. Come for me.”

He immediately enveloped her in a bone-crushing hug, one hand on her shoulder pressing her down as hard as he could while he drove his cock into her, fast and erratic and sloppy wet and then he went rigid as he came, his dick jerking deep inside her, his cum hot enough she felt it spurt up, then begin to roll slowly down. 

Her own body let go all her tension when he relaxed, sinking back onto his heels. She hadn’t come again, but it didn’t matter any longer. She was content.

~~~~

Raven flopped onto her back, her shoulder brushing Roan’s, both of them more or less where they’d fallen as they tumbled limply onto the big bed. Her pulse was slowing and the sheen of sweat and sex between her tits and her thighs and down her belly was drying. 

She turned her head to look at his profile, bold against the saffron light of the Flame-lit clouds. She could see the gleam of his eyes, and the harsh set of his mouth, and she knew instinctively that he was thinking about the events in the throne room.

“Was that the rash behavior you were expecting? All those men yelling at me?” she asked.

He didn’t answer at first, but then he released a deep breath, shaking himself out of whatever he’d been contemplating while staring at the ceiling. “The things they called you? No. I didn’t expect those. Not to my face. I know they believed you didn’t understand a word, but it was rude all the same. They would never use that language in front of a person they knew could understand it.”

“How polite of them,” she said, hoping for a wry tone but hitting sour and bitter by mistake.

He chuckled without humor, rolling onto his side to press an apologetic kiss against her shoulder. “They considered themselves honorable men.”

Raven grimaced, but dropped it. It wasn’t worth pursuing. She rolled onto her own side to face him, “Did you think it would be them? That you’d have to kill?”

“Edard and Pitr? I feared it. Brandon trained under Edard, and Edard under Pitr.” 

Even in the dim glow of the bedroom, his expression was sad. There was no triumph for him in killing these enemies, not when they had been his people, his advisors, maybe even his friends or teachers first.

She had no other comfort to offer but touch, gentle strokes along his shoulder, down the line of his throat, over the twisted, puckered, pink scar in his chest, memento from Kane’s bullet.

“Raven?” his voice was soft.

“Hmm?”

“I know you don’t kill directly very often….” he trailed off, his question more in his tone than his words.

Raven kept her eyes on her fingers, tracing along his pectoral muscles. Telling herself she absolutely would not calculate the number of people he’d killed, directly, today, in the time since he’d left her warm and sated and buried in her furs shortly before dawn in Arkadia, just that morning and a half a lifetime ago.

 _Roan has killed three people today_ , ALIE’s smug voice informed her. _Alba, Larkin, Edard. If Pitr dies of his wound, four. If he killed the assailant at the pauna’s den? Five_.

 _Shut the fuck up_ , Raven told ALIE. _He’s asking about **me** , bitch_.

To Roan she said, “Not often. And not face to face. You were right. He was surprised.”

His big hand settled into the curve of her waist. Warm and comforting. “How do you feel?”

“Okay,” she said, and it was true. Mostly true. “I know, in my head, it was a good call. The right one. But…” she stopped, still uncertain she wanted to follow this train of thought to its end.

“But?” His voice was soft.

She let it go in a rush. If not him, who could she tell? “But in my heart, when I pulled the trigger, I hated him.” Her voice shook a bit with her intensity. She tried to dial it back. “Personally, I mean. He said terrible things about me. About us.” 

She scowled, remembering too clearly Grey-Mohawk’s voice over her headphones, and when she’d figured out who he was. “But mostly about me. I was glad he was going to die today. Not just for betraying you, but because he was a fucking asshole who hurt my feelings. And I can’t help wondering a little bit.” She finally raised her eyes to Roan’s face. “Is that why I shot him? Did I just take the first excuse he offered?” 

Roan’s fingers on the side of her jaw, stroking along her eyebrow, brushing back to comb through her hair, lifting it to let it fall softly to her shoulder, were gentle. His voice was less so. “The excuse he offered was charging at you with a naked blade. He was going to strike you down, or try to control you to get to me. Either way, killing him was the right choice. Self-defense isn’t murder, no matter how much you hated him.”

“So there is a difference?”

“Between murder and war? Yes.”

Raven tried for a little gallows humor. “I wasn’t sure the distinction survived.”

He huffed, a quiet, rueful sound before saying, “Clarke says we act too much like savages, I know. But if we permitted killing people we hate just because we hate them, we’d all have died out long ago. We hate well.”

“Did you hate Edard?” 

“No. I respected him. Valued his advice. Until tonight, anyway. But if it’s any comfort,” he pulled up the corner of his mouth into a small self-mocking grin, “I’ve hated Larkin since my training days. She crawled out of the womb dissatisfied and complaining and whispering secrets, creating discipline problems for any group she was ever part of.”

“That sounds like her.”

“But I didn’t kill her for that. I killed her to save Ivon, a good and loyal man. And you killed Nev to save yourself. I’m very glad you did.”

He leaned closer to kiss her forehead, softly, and then her lips, more lingeringly. When they finally pulled away from each other, he urged her to roll over and then pulled her back to spoon into his chest. “Go to sleep, Raven.”


	10. Chapter 10

Clarke was half-dozing on the rough bench, her head resting comfortably against Bellamy’s shoulder. The heat of his body was helping to ward off the damp chill that persisted despite the hot, muggy air. The cement blocks of the wall at her back and under her ass were sucking all her body heat away. The air smelled of ancient dust, and damp, and urine. 

Weak daylight was filtering down through a high slit in the wall, a pale column creating a brighter silvered-grey oblong on their cell door. It had rained earlier, not long after dawn. A damp mist hardly more wet than the air already had been. It hadn’t cooled the air in the slightest.

They had nothing to do but sit. Clarke had passed what was left of the night in restless sleep, her head on Bellamy’s thigh as she stretched along the old concrete shelf that passed for both seat and cot. She’d tried at first to get him to stretch out, his head in her lap, but the shelf was too narrow for his shoulders and too short for his length. 

“One of us should be as fully rested as possible,” he’d said, and that was that. 

She hoped he was dozing now.

Echo had arrived in the early morning with a plate of rolls stuffed with sausage and a canteen of hot weak tea. “Roan’s compliments,” she’d said. “Better than what the rest of last night’s curfew violators are getting. Enjoy.”

Clarke had tried several more questions, but Echo had closed the door in her face without uttering another word. Some anonymous guard had collected the empty dishware from a small flap at the base of the door.

The sound of the bolts screeching open brought them both to their feet.

Clarke had no real idea who she expected to walk through the door. Echo again, probably. 

King Roan entered, ducking his head for the low lintel, followed by Marcus Kane. 

The two men stood quietly and stared at them while she and Bellamy stared back, trying not to shuffle their guilty feet. Roan assumed his usual stance of casual detachment, arms crossed and hip canted. An attitude which Clarke was now convinced was entirely faked. Kane glowered at them, and seemed to be keeping his hands off his hips only by clasping them tightly behind his back.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Roan said at last.

“We were looking for Raven!” Clarke tried to explain.

“I know, and I understand,” Roan said, sounding quite sincere. Then his voice firmed right up. “But you should have either come straight to me, or waited for morning. Curfew violators are put to work under the headman of Polis. Repair, maintenance, and now prepping the old tunnels for as many as can find shelter there. I can’t make an exception for you. I won’t.”

“At least you don’t kill them,” Bellamy muttered nastily, half under his breath but mostly intending to be heard.

“Would you like me to?” Roan growled at him, swiveling his head to pin him with a glacial stare, his eyebrow raised and his tone deadly serious. “It would mean fewer disobedient mouths to feed, in the hard times ahead.”

“No, no! No need for that,” Clarke interrupted brightly, not at all interested in dealing with their stupid pissing match today.

“Sir?” Bellamy implored Kane with a flick of his eyes. “Are we really going to do this?” 

Kane remained impassive. “I have to agree with Roan. We’re one of the clans now, part of the coalition. We have to follow the same rules as everyone else while we’re here in Polis. Particularly now. Any leniency from Roan would work against our shared goal of showing that there is no special alliance between our clans. That the coalition as a whole remains solid.”

“I suppose,” Roan said, not quite cracking a grin, “I should thank you for the opportunity to demonstrate how even-handed I can be.”

Clarke exchanged a long resigned scowl with Bellamy. She understood perfectly well why they were going to have to go through with this. It still sucked. Then she remembered why they were there in the first place, all her urgency roaring back as she asked Roan, “Where’s Raven? Is she okay?”

“She’s several levels below this one.”

Clarke’s heart leapt for her throat. “What?!” 

“Investigating the source of the flame,” Roan clarified, with what Clarke was certain, had she the recorded footage to find the frame to prove it, was a fleeting, angry smirk at successfully baiting her.

“It’s the first thing she asked about after she woke up this morning,” he added by way of explanation. “Said she’d dreamed about it.” Roan seemed at once pleased and deeply amused by this. “So I found someone to help her find it.”

He jerked his head at Kane, indicating that their audience was over and turned for the door. Over his shoulder he tossed off, “You’ll be collected soon with the rest of the laborers. If you offer a pledge the headman accepts, you’ll be allowed to sleep with your own people. If not, you’ll be back here. Two weeks.”

Within the hour Clarke and Bellamy had been herded up and into the wan, cloudy daylight, along with a few dozen or so hapless grounders caught up in the nets of the night watches. The pavement was still damp from the earlier rain, but it hadn’t cleared the sky. Clarke guessed there was more rain to come.

A towering grim-faced Trikru guard handed them crude twig brooms and faded orange tabards, pieced together from the usual random bits and bobs. With a jerk of his head, they were set to sweeping the main square outside the Tower entrance. 

The better to be seen by all who passed through the tower plaza, Clarke understood. Which seemed to be half the city, one way or another, strolling past on their way to the market stalls or back again. Pointing and snickering once they recognized the two Skaikru. And then, no doubt as Roan had anticipated, standing about to watch. 

The guardsmen made a series of completely ineffectual shooing motions with their halberds, and the crowds meandered on.

Suddenly a horn blast sounded, three piercing bleats, echoing against the stone. 

The gawkers picked up their steps and vanished. Clarke looked at the crew chief. “Should we be going someplace?” she asked.

“Keep sweeping,” he grunted, gesturing toward the ground with his own halberd a good deal less ineffectually than his assistants had. 

“Big meeting at the top,” another of the curfew violators hissed, once the crew chief was off glowering at someone else for chatting on the job as soon as his back was turned. “That’s what those horns mean. ‘Hedas, come to an audience with the Commander’.”

Clarke smiled gratefully. “Thanks.”

The humidity was still very high, and Clarke longed to strip off the tabard and her jacket, but she was pretty sure she’d never see either again if she did, and that she would live to regret both. Instead she adjusted her pace to that of the leisurely sweeping grounders around her, and cocked her head at the sound of distant thunder.

“Rain’s coming,” someone mumbled.

“Not soon enough,” grunted another, to the appreciative chuckles of their little crew. 

Over the next little while clan representatives and their entourages began to appear, wending their way from their various zones of the city toward what was now Roan’s seat of power. 

On days like this it was almost impossible for Clarke to believe it had all been Lexa’s. Or that once, for a very brief window of time, she herself had sat at the top of that tower and dreamed of a different, better world. 

A world that would have burned up under Lexa’s command just as surely as it was going to burn up under Roan’s.

The sound of mocking laughter drew her attention, and she whirled around to see the representative of the High Plains Clan pointing and laughing. At her. And at Bellamy. 

Roan’s point and purpose, Clarke knew. Not just that regular people would see them, but that the coalition leaders would, too. 

It still sucked to be laughed at. Fortunately, there was no harm in looking as sour as she felt about being on display like this. On the contrary, it added to the performance. The Great Wanheda, sweeping up the mud of Polis, just like any other unlucky curfew violator. 

There was a blister growing at the base of her left ring finger. For all the hard work she’d done since landfall, wielding an unbalanced broom with a rough-hewn splintering handle was still unfamiliar to her. However tough her hands had become during her time alone in the wilderness, labor like this hadn’t fallen her way since she’d returned to Arkadia. Bellamy, she noted with some envy, seemed to be having an easier time of it, but then he was much better than she was about throwing himself into whatever taxing physical job needed doing.

She smirked quietly at the broken pavement anyway. This was about as clear a statement as Roan could make that Skaikru had no special privilege. Not yesterday. Not today. And not tomorrow either. It was – almost – fun, even with the blisters, to deal with someone as clever as he was. 

On the other hand, it was killing her that there was a hugely important meeting going on and she wasn’t there to protect the interests of Skaikru.

“We should be up there,” she sidled over and hissed to Bellamy, earning an evil glare from their crew chief.

“Why? How does our being there make it better? Our job is to be seen doing this,” he shook his broom at her, “not rushing into whatever meeting is going on. Kane will stay calm, and Raven is smart. Echo is right – we don’t always improve situations, you and me – we have too much…” he trailed off, then finally concluded with a vague little shrug, “too much-ness.”

Before Clarke could respond, a massive crack of thunder rolled overhead, and a hot gust of wind blew through the square, stirring up their piles of trash and knocking over flag stanchions. As if summoned by the wind, the distinctive warning horns of the Trikru began wailing across the city, sending everyone scrambling for the nearest shelter.

Not acid fog, not any more. Black rain. Burning, scalding, freezing, killing acid rain.

Everyone in the plaza scattered immediately, heading for whatever cover was closest. Clarke, who’d been trying to find an opportunity, any opportunity, to get into the tower for an hour now, was ready to seize this one. She tossed her broom, gripped Bellamy’s sleeve, yelled “With me” and then darted off towards the tower, towing him along until he was moving under his own steam. She tore off her orange tabard and stashed it behind a pile of broken furniture as she dashed through the main entrance along with a score of other stragglers, just steps ahead of the rain hissing down behind them. 

She and Bellamy slipped into the crowded elevator as the doors were closing, squirming through the packed space to find a spot against the back wall, and keeping their heads down. 

They stepped out at the top into a scene that to Clarke seemed to come straight out of a late Renaissance painting, something already moving along to the macabre and abstract. El Greco, maybe, or Goya. 

Roan was standing in front of his throne in his full King kit, backlit by a silver curtain of driving rain. The ever-present banks of candles illuminated the greenish-grey swag of Azgeda across his shoulder, and his big hand on the white bone hilt of the sword hanging at his waist. The disturbing polished-bone crown of his grandfather rested on his brow, gleaming palely against his dark hair and beard. 

The floor before him was packed with restless, muttering people, the room far more crowded than Clarke had ever seen it before. It was made worse by the rain, everyone pressed as far away from the broken windows as they could get, staying out of reach of the burning drops, squashed much closer together than was wise.

The faded dark colors and crooked seams Grounders favored blended into one shifting mass, contorted faces with flashing eyes and open mouths standing out in sharp relief.

Several Azgedans, his advisors Clarke assumed, flanked the king. Men and women dressed in grounder finery, all in the blues and blacks and greys of Azgeda, their weapons visible and their hair pulled back or shaved off to show their scars.

Closest to the front of the crowd were the other clan hedas. Grouped with their personal advisors in a rough semi-circle before the King Commander. Indra, proud leader of the Trikru faced Roan squarely, right in the center. To her left was Kane, to her right, the heda of Trishanakru. Behind the row of hedas were some whose faces Clarke thought she recognized, and many more she didn’t. Standing apart, in attitude if not actual physical space, was a small group of ouspikas, priests, their cowls pushed back to reveal their shaved and tattooed heads.

As she scanned the room, trying to make sense of the mood and the action, wondering what had been happening besides the rain to make everyone so tense and angry, Clarke realized she wasn’t finding Raven. Not anywhere. 

Trying to slow her heart, telling herself not to panic before it was necessary, she forced herself to take an orderly approach, starting on her left and working her way clockwise around the room. 

She finally spotted her. Raven was seated on a bench along the back wall, near the foot of the spiral stair that led up to a small balcony. She was flanked by Ivon and Swego, the three of them leaning back with their heads close together as they spoke quietly. 

“King Roan,” a woman’s clear voice rose above the packed crowd. “You tell us you honor our ways, honor the coalition, honor Becca Pramheda’s teaching. But you’ve ignored her warnings and welcomed Skaikru among us. Now you have chosen one of them over your own people.”

“Gaia.” Roan acknowledged her with a curt nod. “I can do both. Honor our ways, and welcome Skaikru.”

“No!” cried several in the crowd, deep voices and shrill ones blending together in furious denial. “You cut us out! Azgeda and Skaikru will leave us to burn!”

Roan was louder now, projecting in his deepest voice to drown out the crowd. “Skaikru is one of the clans, as Commander Lexa intended. As is Azgeda, since my mother Queen Nia accepted the mark. All of us the same. None more, none less. No special arrangements, no special privileges.” He paused, raising his hand to quiet a few mutterers, collecting the room’s attention again, then concluded, “Those of you who were in the courtyard earlier can testify to this. Even the Wanheda herself is subject to our laws.”

Clarke was, perhaps, seventy-five percent certain that as Roan spoke he was staring right at her and Bellamy, eyes narrowed as he willed them to stay quiet and still.

Around her and throughout the crowed she saw many people nodding, a handful calling out their approval or agreement, “Yes!” and “We saw!”

“The black rain is a warning!” Gaia cried, apparently having sensed right along with Clarke that Roan was swaying the crowd and refusing to go down with out a fight. “A warning to all of us that we have failed the first commander! We let tech into the world again, and now it burns us where we stand!”

“Your flame was tech!” a man’s angry voice rang out, “Your flame was a computer! Tech that wanted to steal our minds while our bodies burned! It had nothing to do with Skaikru at all!”

Clarke realized, about the same time as half the crowd, that Ilian of Trishanakru was pushing forward through masses, speaking as he came. “Our ways are dead. The flame offers us nothing. This rain is killing us now and we need solutions, not a sermon!”

“Skaikru!” several voices called out. “Skaikru can help!”

“Why should they help you?” Ilian turned to the crowd, his lip curled in disdain. “They’ve suffered attack after attack at our hands, ever since they fell to earth, halfway between Mount Weather and Polis. Why should they care if we all die now?”

“Azgeda and Skaikru will betray us!” cried a heda Clarke didn’t recognize. 

“Silence!” A huge, barrel-chested Azgedan had stepped to the edge of the dais and pounded on the floor with the base of his spear. He bellowed again. “Silence! Hear the King Commander!”

The crowd gradually quieted. 

“Skaikru is one of the thirteen clans of the coalition,” Roan said, pitching his voice loud and clear. “They abide by our treaties and our laws. So does Azgeda. We cut no one out who does their part.”

“What part?” Indra demanded loudly. “What part?”

“Praimfaya is returning. Not from anything Skaikru has done or will do. But because our ancestors who burned the world are reaching out from beyond death to do it again. Their hubris was greater than even they knew. They attempted to bend the earth to their whims, but the earth is fighting back.”

“It will be mighty and it will be terrible, but as our grandfathers’ fathers survived the first cataclysm, so will we survive this one. We will reopen the tunnels. Dig deeper into the mountains. Ration our food wisely until the old water gardens bloom again.”

“With what water?” Gaia demanded. “That water?” She pointed dramatically at the rain lashing down. “That water that will kill us all if it touches us?”

“Skaikru have ways and means,” Kane called out. “We are making as many water filters as we can, and we will make them as long as we can get parts and supplies. We have medicines for radiation sickness and burns, and with your help more can be made. We offer advice and assistance with sealing tunnels and bunkers, and finding more. With King Roan’s help, we’ve even managed to reenter the mines and garages below Mt. Weather. We believe that they can be….”

“Trickery!” someone shouted from the crowd. “These are tricks to deceive us! Lead us into the darkness and abandon us to the reapers!” 

“Heretics! They don’t believe!” called out a powerful male voice.

“Azgeda doesn’t believe!” shouted another.

“Roan doesn’t believe!” More than one yelled.

“Heretic!” shrieked out a half-dozen more, mixed men and women alike. “Heretic!”

Clarke realized with a start that these cries were coordinated. “Bellamy! We have to do something!” she whispered urgently, tugging at his sleeve.

“I know!” he said, bending close to her ear. “I see it, too. You wait here.”

“Bellamy! What are you…” she trailed off. He was already gone. With his dark head and dark jacket he quickly blended into the crowd. Then she saw Echo slip off the backside of the dais. She seemed to be headed in the same direction Bellamy was. 

Roan hadn’t moved. Neither had the rest of his advisors. He raised his hand for quiet, and to Clarke’s amazement, the restless crowd gradually settled enough for him to speak.

“Where is the fleimkepa?” he asked.

Gaia stepped forward again, her chin raised proudly. “Here I am.”

“You lost the flame,” he said. “The computer chip was in your care, and you lost it.”

Clarke knew this was a stretch. It had been in his care, and Gaia had stolen it. Then when cornered by Ilian kom Trishanakru and his tech-smashing mob, with Octavia’s help, Gaia had turned over a dead copy and watched them grind it to dust. As far as everyone else knew, the chip – the flame – was gone. 

Everyone but Clarke. Octavia had confessed to her one bleary night, a little bit drunk and a little bit sad and falling hard for her tech-smashing farmer-soldier boy and terrified she’d let the truth out because it was one burden too many for her to carry. It had been a relief to her to give it over to Clarke.

Gaia gasped and staggered back at the accusation of carelessness, pointing at Roan as she cried again, “Heretic! You ask us to cast down our Gods, call them tech!”

Clarke had never – until now – thought that Gaia much resembled her mother. Now she was definitely seeing a strong family flair for the dramatic bald-faced lie of misdirection.

“Not cast down!” 

Clarke snapped her head around so fast she nearly staggered. That was Raven’s voice. Raven, who had slipped into the crowd and was now approaching the dais, Ivon and Swego shouldering her a path.

Raven walked deliberately past Gaia. Her limp was a little more pronounced than usual today, but she was moving freely and without her sticks. And then she paused directly in front of Roan, raising her eyes to his face. He simply held out his hand for her, and when she accepted it, he steadied her as she stepped up and onto the lowest level of the platform. 

Her favored deep red jersey stood out like, well, like a flame against the dark blues and greys of Azgeda, or among the muted tones of the rest. It also made her warm coppery skin glow and her large brown eyes shine under her dark brows. Her thick, silky hair was bound up in her usual combination of braids and twists ending in a flowing ponytail. Clarke wasn’t entirely sure if she was imagining it, but she also rather thought someone had cleaned up and polished Raven’s brace and shined her boots. 

Clarke assured herself that all this meant Raven was prepped and ready. That she and Roan had cooked up some last brilliant scheme to salvage something from this mess that they’d literally fucked themselves into, dragging along everyone else in their wake.

Turning to address the buzzing throng, Raven’s expression was utterly serene. “Not cast down!” she repeated, her faintly husky voice carrying easily over the crowd. “Recognize, study, test, understand, and respect.” 

And then, to Clarke’s complete and utter shock, Raven switched to fluent Trigedasleng to declare, “I am the first tekspeka of the Coalition! I am also the fleimkepa of Skaikru! Servant-student of Becca Pramheda, first prophet of Polis.”

A visible gasp rippled through the crowd, and they rocked back nearly as one as they took in this stunning announcement.

Into the first true silence that had fallen since Clarke stepped out of the elevator, Raven Reyes, still speaking in Trigedasleng as though it were her mother tongue, proclaimed, “Tech is the flame. The flame is tech. Tekspeka and Fleimkepa. Same thing. I control the tech. I control the flame.”

“Liar!” Gaia screamed.

Raven raised one elegant brow, tossing her hair back as she did, her hands loose and easy at her sides. “Test me,” she said in Trigedasleng. “Test me, if you dare,” she repeated, in English.

~~~~

Raven stared down her nose at Gaia, and then let her lips turn up into the most infinitesimally small smug smile she could manage. If Gaia was anything like her mother, watching someone else appear to make a mockery of her or things she believed in would have her firing up in no time flat. With a direct challenge tossed at her feet, Raven was counting on her to snatch it up.

Gaia raised her chin. “I dare. You don’t scare me, skai gada.”

Raven fought back her triumphant grin. Roan had coached her to appear calm and serene. “I’m the same age you are,” she told Gaia now. “And I’m not trying to scare anyone.”

“Then prove your claim.”

_Early that morning, Raven had opened her eyes to grey skies and drizzling rain, feeling absolutely certain that she had to discover the source of the flame._

_As soon as possible. Today if she could. Lives depended on it._

_She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she knew it for truth as immutable as the order of rotation of the planets around the sun. Fortunately, she was fucking the king. Who happened to be waking up beside her, morning boner at the ready. One easy, friendly morning fuck later, and she wound her arms around his neck and told him so. “I need to find it! Today if I can. I just know it’s incredibly important. Too important to ignore.”_

_Kings, in their seat of power, could accomplish a whole hell of a lot, even when being summoned to early meetings by Indra kom Trikru. “News has spread,” he said as he left Raven to her breakfast._

_By the time Raven was finishing her tea, two grease-stained elevator men and one plumber were knocking tentatively at the door. The elevator men introduced themselves as Mech and Gin, and, startled into candor, Raven blurted out, “As in_ Mechanic _and_ Engineer _?”_

_The two men just beamed at her, like sun breaking through clouds. “No one ever gets it that fast!” Mech exclaimed._

_“Or at all!” Gin added._

_The elevator men, and Plom the plumber – “Like the fruit,” he told her, with an absolutely straight face – immediately led her to the center of the tower, where they invited her to climb through the elevator shaft with them to examine the central pipe stack that lay beyond._

_Raven fell into hard-platonic love with all three of them over the course of the next few hours. She wanted to crush them to her chest and never let them go. Her people, at last. Grounders who had minds like her own._

_Well, not exactly like hers, of course. She was brilliant. They were ordinary, hard-working mechanics._

_But with minds and hands for gears and pulleys, pipes and drains. When she explained that she wanted to keep going, to find the source of the gas that fueled the flame as well as the pipe that carried it to the top of the tower, they nodded eagerly and told her they’d always wanted to find it, too, only Titus the Fleimkepa had prohibited them from ever even asking about it. Turned out that while Titus could prevent them from asking, he couldn’t prevent them from thinking, or observing, or drawing educated guesses from the same._

_Two hours later she and her guides were three levels below ground, two buildings over from the tower itself, staring about in slack-jawed amazement. Dim light filtering in through ancient clerestory windows high above them illuminated what once had to have been a fifty-meter Olympic-sized swimming pool. Then later on, but still long ago, the pool had been converted into what surely had to be the largest gas separator drum ever conceived._

_Pipes of all sizes, from the diameter of her fist to almost a meter across, nearly two hundred of them, were coming in from every direction. Raven felt like she’d stepped into some old movie, where the archeologist hero stumbles into the ancient temple and discovers the gods are still alive._

_She kept circling around, trying to take it all in, to make sense of what she was seeing. “They’ve got to be bringing in gas from the entire eastern grid!” she said, stunned by the audaciousness of the undertaking._

_“The eastern grid? What’s that?” Plom asked._

_She explained, as best she could in Trigedasleng. “Natural gas supplied nearly half of the energy needs of the old United States, enough to generate power for nearly 200 million households. Half of that must still be in the system, and someone, Becca Pramheda probably, routed it all here!” She spun around on her heels, taking in the whole amazing setup again. “What in the hell did she intend to use it for?”_

__Power, _ALIE’s voice whispered inside her head._ She was going to use it for Power _._

_“Duh,” Raven replied._

_When her helpers looked at her in confusion, she hastened to distract them from the crazy lady talking to the voices in her head. “Let’s find the oil drain!”_

_Afterwards, tracking the gas main back up through the tower, they paused again in the routing room tucked into the basement of the tower itself. The three men waited while Raven lifted her solar lantern high, and tried to parse the numeric ID codes that labeled dozens and dozens of valves and pipes. Everything mechanical. None of it digital or electric. Built after the cataclysm._

__Because of me, _ALIE said._

 __Yep, _Raven agreed. Silently this time._ Because of you _._

_Her growling stomach reminded her that time was running short, and Roan had a dozen angry, frightened clan hedas on his hands, along with Clarke and Bellamy in his jail, swept up with other curfew violators the night before._

_She made a few quick notes on her tablet, took several pictures, and moved on._

_She still desperately wanted to find the controls for the flare stack, to see if she could shut it off from inside the tower. But Gin and Mech insisted that there was no access point after the basement routing room, where the pipe stack rose up alongside the elevator shaft, and then continued on without pause or disruption all the way to the flame itself._

_Except, Raven finally realized, in the throne room. “The Tower is round!” she exclaimed to her guides and assistants, waving her hands in excitement as she illustrated her words. “The room is an arc. It wraps around the elevator shaft. And the pipe stack!”_

_After that it didn’t take them long at all to locate what they were looking for._

_Once they found the controls, she sought out Roan. She found him in what had been, still was, she supposed, the quarters assigned to Azgeda inside the Tower._

_He was alone now, amazingly enough, and staring moodily out the window at the not-very distant sea on the horizon, when Raven burst in with her news._

_“I can control the flame,” she announced to a startled king._

Now back in the throne room, Raven glanced up to the top of the spiral stair. It seemed to lead simply to a small balcony that ran along one side of the throne room, one that allowed attendants to change out the candles in the heavy chandeliers. But it also had a recessed alcove that contained a hidden door. One that had rusted shut and required some effort to force open again. Mech was standing in it now, waiting to give Plom the signal.

“As you wish. I will stop the flame.” Raven looked Gaia. “Do you have someone you trust in a different building? Someone who can reliably tell you that the flame is gone?”

She didn’t think this would be entirely necessary. She was pretty sure that once the flame was turned down to it’s lowest setting, all of the air currents around the top of the tower would shift. Fairly dramatically. 

Gaia shook her head in confusion. “What flame?”

“This flame. The flame.” Raven pointed toward the ceiling. “The one on top of this tower. I told you. I control the flame. I control tech. The flame is tech. Tech is the flame.”

“That is the eternal flame!” Gaia cried, her voice and expression full of disbelieving outrage. “Lit by Becca Pramheda herself to guard this sacred space!”

“Yes.” Raven nodded. “And I can put it out. And let the wind blow into this room. And then I can light it again.” 

“You would put out what Becca Pramheda lit?!” Gaia was all open hostility now.

“Is there any other proof you would accept? That would lead you to acknowledge that I have this power?”

Gaia frowned deeply, but didn’t speak. 

“Then let me offer my proof.” Raven offered a quick prayer to the bitch goddess of Polis that this would all work, then raised her hand to signal Mech, and called out, “Now, please.”

 _Of course it will work,_ ALIE said. _It was your idea._

_I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Becca Pramheda._

_She’s here, too. Inside me._

_You’re a ghost in my head._

_A ghost built in Becca Pramheda’s image._

After a terrible moment when nothing seemed to be happening at all, there came a funny whistling sound, and then a ‘pop’ that was more of a sensation against Raven’s ears than an actual audible noise. This was followed by a queer silence. One that forced a recognition that the flame actually did produce a steady low hissing, more a vibration than a sound. Mech nodded firmly, twice. 

The wind rushed in.

People screamed.

Raven remembered the warning horns. 

Acid Rain.

Acid Rain driving through the open windows.

“Mech!” She yelled, already in motion, headed for the spiral stairs. “Turn it back up!”

_No, Raven._

_What?!_

_Wait. The rain won’t reach the people. Only a little mist. Mist too fine to carry the black ash. Tell them to be quiet. And listen._

Raven stopped. Not that she could’ve made it through the writhing crowd of panicked people anyway. She turned back for the dais, Ivon hefted her up by her elbow and Roan caught her by her arms and pulled her close enough to hear him over all the noise and confusion, “What are you doing?” 

“I forgot about the rain!” she cried. “It wasn’t part of the plan!”

“Make it work!” 

She spun to face the crowd again. 

Immediately she could see that ALIE was right. The prevailing winds of Polis came from the east. From the sea. The throne room was on the western side of the Tower. The rain was coming in no further than before, and though the gusts brought in odd clouds of mist, as it settled on her hands and cheeks, it didn’t burn. 

Black rain wasn’t really acidic water, Raven knew. It was acidic particulates, ash, from the great burning, rinsing out of the clouds along with the rain. The particulates were heavy enough that they continued falling with the water. The mist carried by the wind must be too fine to bear the weight of the ash.

The people nearest the windows were figuring out the same thing. Kane was already bellowing, “Don’t panic. It won’t burn you. It’s too fine to carry the ash!”

Raven raised her arms and began to speak. “Hedas! Fleimkepa! Ouspikas!”

The big man at the end of the dais began pounding his spear butt, and bellowing, “Hear the tekspeka! Hear the tekspeka!”

The crowd quieted, enough for Raven anyway. She didn’t want to lose the moment. 

“The flame is a tool,” she called out. “A tool built by Becca Pramheda herself to bring power to Polis. Power to mend. Power to heal. Power to build. Power to protect this room. Now we need that power to survive what is coming. We need to control the flame. We need to find and share and use all of Becca Pramheda’s knowledge. All of her teaching. All of her tech.”

Raven dropped her arms and swung around to stare pointedly at the cluster of priests, glaring as she warned them, “We need everything. All of her works. Her writing. Her diaries. Her journals and notes. Every scrap. The time for secrets and hoarded knowledge is past.”

The crowd was completely still and silent now. 

At that moment Raven realized the wind had vanished. The low rumbling hiss of the flame could be felt again.

She looked up and saw Mech, holding up his thumbs and grinning madly at her, signaling that the flame was back to full strength.

Time to wrap it up.

She looked back over the crowd. “I am the tekspeka. Servant-student of Becca Pramheda, first prophet of Polis. I control the flame.”

Raven looked at Gaia. The color had drained from her face, and her eyes were hot and dry. “Fleimkepa?” Raven asked her.

Gaia bobbed her head in the briefest of acknowledgement. “Tekspeka.”

“No!” shrieked a voice from the audience. “No! No Skaikru whore dictates our fate! No apostate king commands our obedience!”

Struggling figures burst out from the edges of the crowd, three, four, six, seven, more, all of them converging on Raven.

A gunshot rang out, and the man who had come the closest to Raven tumbled to the floor, a large red hole between his eyes. Then another, and another, and one more, and three more would-be assailants crumpled into the rapidly emptying space before the dais. At the same time Echo appeared on the far left, swinging her staff savagely into the gut of a fifth, Bellamy followed a sixth out of the crowd and caught her shoulder, spinning her around and knocking her cold with a heavy blow to her jaw. Directly in front of Raven, Ivon and Swego pulled down a seventh man, tossing in a few extra kicks once he was on the ground.

Roan stepped up behind her, Nate’s gun steady in his hand, his drawn sword raised warningly in the other. “I have plenty more rounds,” he said, slowly sweeping the crowd with the gun. “If anyone else would like to die today.”

There was silence. No one moved.

“No?” he asked, stepping beside Raven and bending up his arm to point the gun at the ceiling. “Then we will go forward as we were. Thirteen clans preparing for Praimfaya. We will do as the tekspeka and fleimkepas advise. Knowing the first commander has given us all her blessing to use her tech.”


	11. Chapter 11

Clarke stared aghast as Roan swept Raven out of the throne room, surrounded by his advisors, and with Ivon and Swego falling in directly behind him. Echo trailed after, supervising the three dazed and gagged prisoners being hauled off by a handful of Azgeda soldiers. They all stepped over the dead bodies as if they were so much fallen timber on the forest floor. 

_What the hell just happened here?_ , Clarke wanted to shriek at someone. At Raven. Or Roan. At both of them. 

They hadn’t limited themselves to merely wiggling out from accusations of a special alliance bent on cutting out all the other clans. They’d aimed far higher. They’d just attempted to fundamentally rebalance the relationship between faith and science among the clans! Not by opposing them, but by joining them. 

It was brilliant and audacious and terrifying all at once. The potential gains were enormous. But, however astonished and impressed she was, she was also furious. They'd just charged right into what could turn out to be a complete and utter disaster. _What the hell had they been thinking?_

As soon as the commander and his tekspeka were gone the spell lifted and the crowd burst into speech, much louder than before, twisting into noisy little knots of gesticulating warriors as everyone in the room struggled to come to grips with all that they had just witnessed. Clarke dove into the writhing mass, trying to make her way to the spot she'd last seen Bellamy, only to be accosted by Nate and Kane halfway through. 

"Head for the elevator," Kane said, his hand wrapping firmly around her elbow. Protecting, guiding, and mostly so they didn't get separated again. Their goal, Kane told her when he had the chance, was the quarters he’d been assigned when he was in Polis during the immediate aftermath of ALIE.

They weren’t the only ones trying to get out of the throne room. 

Acid rain was still sheeting down, so no one could actually leave the building. But everyone was trying to leave the throne room. All at once. There was a massive crush at the elevator and the stairwells as people struggled to head out and down, seeking places to regroup and process all that they’d seen and heard. 

Thanks to Kane’s quick reaction, the four of them were at the head of the line. They made it into the elevator as soon as it returned from the first run. 

They rode in silence. The elevator was jam-packed with other equally silent people, streaming out in groups of three or four as they reached their various floors. 

Kane’s room was about halfway up the tower. Or down, in their case.

Once the door to Kane’s quarters closed firmly behind them, Clarke whirled toward the rest, her shoulders and her back rigid with tension, and her voice so tight with stress she was practically creaking when she fumed, “How could Raven pull such a stunt? Doesn't she understand how dangerous it was? To go off on her own like that? What could have happened to her, to all of us, if it had gone wrong?!” 

There was an uncomfortable pause while all three men stared at her, various expressions of shock and incredulity on their faces.

“Are you joking right now?” Nate finally said, his eyebrows nearly meeting his hairline. “After everything you dragged Skaikru into on your own?”

Clarke flushed in dismay. Or at least, felt her cheeks and her neck heat. She just assumed she’d turned an unpleasant blotchy red. 

“I meant without us!” Clarke replied, trying to keep what little of her composure remained. “Without sharing her plans, making sure we would be in a position to help!”

“She’s got the fucking Ice King playing backup,” Nate pointed out. Ungraciously.

Kane spoke up, calming and yet somehow insufferable all at once. “She wasn’t off on her own, Clarke. I knew. She and Roan shared their plans with me.”

“You approved of that?” Clarke gaped at him, possibly more shocked by that than anything else so far. 

“Okay,” Kane folded his arms across his chest and shrugged a little helplessly. “I knew part of their plan. And I supported it. For lack of a better idea.”

“Which part?” 

“The flame part. I knew she was going to try and turn it off, as a way of refocusing everyone’s attention on Roan and the problem of Praimfaya.”

“And the first tekspeka of the coalition part? The servant-student of Becca Pramheda part?” Clarke asked incredulously, homing in on what were clearly the most irresponsibly daring elements of Raven’s wild improvisations. “You were okay with those?”

Kane titled his head, resigned humor flashing in his eyes. “That element came as a surprise. But,” and the glance he aimed at her was sharp indeed, “I’m getting used to being surprised whenever I’m in Polis.”

He didn’t touch the Coalition brand on his forearm or the shackle scars on his wrists. He didn’t need to. Clarke remembered them just fine.

“How about Roan using my gun?” Miller snapped. “Did that part come as a surprise, too?’

“Yes. That was a surprise, too.” Kane remained aggravatingly calm.

They’d finally settled into the seating area around a low table, going over the whole event for the third or fourth time, and Clarke was finding it no more explicable or palatable than the first time, when a heavy knock on the door announced Raven’s arrival, Swego at her shoulder.

“Hey,” Raven said, a little uncertainly, after thanking Swego and sending him back to Roan. Clutching her tablet to her chest, she continued, “I know I should have come down sooner, but things are still a little crazed up top.”

“A _little_ crazed?” Bellamy said, leaning back and folding his arms. 

“Well,” Raven replied, trying for a bright smile. “At least no one’s worried about an unsanctioned wedding anymore.”

That’s when the yelling started.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Bellamy was on his feet, stomping about the room and waving his arms, but now he spun on Raven again. “What makes you think you can just do shit like that? Step up and drag Skaikru back into the shitpile that is Polis?”

“What the hell is wrong with me?” Raven yelled right back, her eyes wide with shocked outrage. “What the hell is wrong with **you**? What makes you think you have any business telling me what to do? That your judgment is any better than mine? You backed Charles Pike, you fucking asshole!”

They were right up in each other’s faces now, yelling past each other about who got to decide when to drag their people into new alliances or when to sever them, and Clarke pushed her way in, trying to settle them both down. “Bellamy’s right! You put yourself out in front and you nearly died, Raven! We could have lost you! We could still lose you!”

Raven turned her hot eyes on Clarke. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve had at least a dozen different people come at me in just the last two days! I’ve got a target on my back the size of the fucking flame!”

Clarke refused to back down. "That sucks. I know. I’ve been targeted, too. But it doesn’t…"

Raven cut her off. “No. You really don’t know, Clarke. You were a trophy. Me? They think I'm disgusting. Whore is the best of what they call me. Whore. Cunt. Cow. Goat. Sow. Hole. Wood tick! Yeah. I got compared to a fucking wood tick yesterday. There’s a fantastic mental image for you!”

It was a hideous, hurtful image, as it had been intended to be no doubt. They all were. They made Clarke’s heart pinch for Raven, at the same time they made her gut roil with tension. These kinds of dehumanizing words led nowhere good. History lessons on the Ark had stressed that again and again. They also robbed Clarke of any immediate response. 

“Oh, and my leg,” Raven was still talking, bottled up hurt and anger spilling out of her as she waved her hands around, gesturing furiously at her brace. “They love to hate on me for my leg. I’m a cripple, a mutant, a broken disgusting thing. And they hate on him for that, too. Swear he’s not man enough to take on a whole woman who could fight back. Wonder if I can even move when he fucks me. Wonder if maybe he’s got strange kinks about braces and cages. Maybe he chains me up, ties me down. Humiliates me. Or he wants me to humiliate him. More than I do already just by being with him at all!”

Raven glared around the room, her chest heaving, her checks splotchy and her eyes luminous with unshed tears. Tears, Clarke recognized after a startled moment, of helpless unadulterated rage.

But before Clarke could say anything at all, Bellamy came right back at Raven, “Which is what you get for fucking around with a king, Reyes. Factory rats like us should stick to our own kind.”

“Bellamy!” Clarke whirled to stare at him in shock. “You can’t mean that!”

“Why wouldn’t I mean it?” he demanded, his jaw raised high in familiar challenge. “Every time it’s a fucking disaster!”

A sudden metallic pounding at their backs made them all spin, hearts pounding and hands raised at the new threat.

“Stop it! All of you!” Kane was standing over a dresser, a heavy metal candlestick in one hand, a shallow metal bowl in the other. “Everyone sit down!” he barked, gesturing with the candlestick at the various couches and chairs. “Now!”

No one moved. 

“Sit down. Now. Please.” Kane repeated himself, more calmly.

They all sat down. 

But first Clarke marched up to Raven and pulled her into a fierce hug. She might not understand, but she could see full well how hurt Raven was by the things Roan’s enemies had said to her. Had said about her. And it was all such fucking bullshit. Raven was brilliant and beautiful and there was no way anyone who spent any time around her at all didn’t know that. 

Raven froze at her touch, but then she relaxed and wrapped her own arms around Clarke and hugged her back.

“He’s incredibly lucky you even want to be with him. You are awesome. You should always be chosen first,” Clarke said as she let her go. “And all the smart people know that.”

“Too bad so many people are so fucking stupid, then,” Raven said, but at least she managed a watery sounding sniff of disdain. 

Clarke took her hand and pulled her down next to her on one of the small couches.

Nate and Bellamy claimed the other. Clarke took a moment to shoot them a sharp glare, communicating as best she could that they needed to step up and defend their friend. Right fucking now. Neither one of them would meet her eyes.

Kane took the big chair, reminding all of them who was in charge here.

“What’s going on upstairs?” Kane directed this question to a more composed Raven, after giving them all a moment to catch their breath. Clarke hadn’t let go of her hand.

“They’re trying to figure out how deep the conspiracy to take out Roan runs,” Raven replied. “The one Brandon and the rest were part of. Is still a part of, he hasn’t been found yet. They’d love to think that it’s mostly eliminated, but….”

Bellamy raised a questioning brow. “But?”

“But it isn’t. Roan doesn’t think so anyway.” Raven made an unhappy face, gently pulling her hand from Clarke’s to wrap herself in her own arms. “He thinks it’s an even bigger problem than he knew. That it went all the way to the top in Azgeda, into his own council, and out into other clans, even into the priests. That it’s really the same old conspiracy. The one that took his mother down. The one full of all the people who never wanted the coalition, never trusted us, hated Lexa for dealing with Mount Weather, and wanted to wipe out Arkadia.”

Clarke frowned. This seemed entirely too plausible. 

“And how does your tekspeka stunt play into all that?” Bellamy asked.

Raven’s jaw firmed up. “It’s not a stunt.”

“I hope not. Because four more people just died for it.”

Raven glared at him.

Kane intervened. “Bellamy has a point. But the question remains. How does you becoming the tekspeka for the whole coalition play into all this?”

Raven narrowed her eyes one last time at Bellamy, and then she turned her attention to Kane. “First, it should help counteract any concerns that my expertise, that Skaikru expertise, won’t be shared with everyone. That tech won’t be shared with everyone. Second, it should help take some of the stigma away from science and tech, pull it all back together with the flame and faith. As it should have been all along. They worship a scientist, for crying out loud!”

“And third?” Bellamy prompted, after Raven fell silent.

“This one is more classic grounder. The theory is that everyone who’s rushed to him to talk about it, pro or con, they figure are still mostly with him. Still coming to him with their grievances and their problems and their concerns. It’s the ones holding back they’re worried about.”

“How many is that?” Bellamy asked, leaning forward now, sharp and alert and ever so vaguely avid for news of just how precarious Roan’s position was. 

Raven shot Bellamy a suspicious glare, picking up on his mood. But she answered the question. “About a third of his war chiefs are waiting and watching. Four clans are in a meeting right now, contemplating trying to leave the coalition. Including Trikru and Trishanakru.”

“Indra wouldn’t do that!” Kane objected, clearly taken aback. 

Clarke, who had a rather different experience of Indra, remembering quite clearly the day the TonDC heda raged around Lexa’s tent bellowing, _kill them all!_ , kept to herself her thought that Indra most certainly would stab them all in the back if she felt like it. Or, more likely, stab them directly in the face.

“I embarrassed her daughter, and set Gaia down several notches in power and authority, all at once.” Raven said. Clearly not sorry for her actions, but aware of the potential costs.

Clarke turned to Raven in surprise. “I didn’t think they were close?” 

“I don’t think they are. But she’s still her daughter.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Kane asked.

Raven raised her chin. “Stay the fuck out of sight until he calls us.” 

There was no need to ask her who ‘he’ was. Right now, for Raven, there was only one.

Kane nodded. “Reasonable. We can do that.”

“And I have a puzzle you might be able to help me with, while we wait.” Raven leaned forward and grabbed her tablet from the coffee table, quickly filling them in on her morning’s explorations and showing them pictures of her discoveries, ending with, “It’s really just a flare stack. I think the gas was supposed to be fuel for other things, but it’s not being diverted right now. All the closed pipes are labeled, but in a numeric code. One with no key.”

Bellamy gave up first, throwing up his hands and standing up. “This really isn’t my thing.”

It wasn’t Clarke’s either, but she struggled on a while longer, then she too excused herself, leaving Nate and Kane to the sketches and the maps and the number codes.

She wandered over to join Bellamy, who was staring out the window at the rain. It was still coming down steadily, though not as hard. Clarke figured it would finally clear up in another hour or so. Then who knew what fresh hell would beak loose?

“You were a little hard on her, don’t you think?” she said, keeping her tone light and low and her face toward the rain, watching him only out of the corners of her eyes.

He shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s hard for me, to watch people I care about get caught up in these love affairs with no hope. They end in nothing but tragedy.”

“Factory rats and kings?” she quoted.

“People born to power see the world differently from people born with none. They think if they want something badly enough, they can just have it. People like us,” and Clarke was keenly aware that he didn’t include her in that bitter ‘us’, “we know better. Or we should.”

She gave up the pretense of looking at the rain and turned to him to ask, “You really believe there’s no hope for them, that love can’t conquer all?”

She’d been letting a little hope build for them, herself. If nothing else, his people wouldn’t be so furious with Raven if they didn’t suspect that their King liked her a very great deal.

“Clarke,” Bellamy admonished her, “Come on. He’s a grounder king. He stays on the throne or he dies, and he will sacrifice anything and anyone to stay there. Including Raven!”

“He wouldn’t hurt her!” This Clarke wanted to believe with all her heart.

“It might not be his first choice, no. But if he ever got truly cornered? Yes. He’ll throw her to the wolves. Us, too.”

“No!”

“Yes! Twice in the last two days alone he’s set her up to take the shots meant for him. What if one of those people had got lucky? Then no one gets a First Tekspeka. Not even us!”

“No one even touched her, Bellamy. He’s made it perfectly clear he’ll kill anyone who even tries!”

“And when he’s not there?”

Clarke scowled down at her toes.

“Roan put that target on her back himself, with his own two damn hands!” 

When Clarke risked lifting her eyes to his face, she found he was glaring back at her.

His expression broke and his voice softened. “I believe that he doesn’t want her to get hurt. That he’ll do anything he can to prevent it. But, if Raven is the price he has to pay to save something he values more, he will. You know this Clarke. Better than anyone!”

His eyes bored into hers, hot and impatient still, but also imploring her to recognize what he believed to be the truth. 

And God help her, Clarke did recognize it. If Finn hadn't given himself up, would she eventually have agreed to sacrifice him? She’d never been sure she wouldn't have. That she wouldn't have chosen to throw Finn to the wolves to save the rest of the Arkers. And that alone was more guilt-inducing the knife she'd plunged into his heart. At least she could tell herself that by that act she'd saved him from excruciating pain. Finn’s ghost hadn’t haunted her in a long time, but she knew he was always out there. Waiting and watching.

And she’d had it done to her. The cold shock that had burned into her gut at Lexa’s betrayal at Mount Weather had never really warmed up since. The hurt had been so terrible, the things that came after so horrific, that she’d tumbled into an emotional tailspin that lasted for months. One that in turn had hurt terribly all the people she loved. And ultimately further endangered them.

Clarke swallowed hard. “You don’t believe in the power of love to save people? To lift them up?”

“Of course I do, Clarke,” Bellamy said, earnest and boyish in the way that made her own heart beat a little faster. “But that kind of romantic love you’re talking about, it can make you do stupid, reckless, dangerous things. We’re balanced on a knife-edge, here. We can’t afford to lose sight of that. We need Raven not to lose sight of that. Or,” he added, grudgingly but as one honor-bound, “Roan.”

“Don’t you think that falling in love, while you still can, could be a good thing?” she asked him, trying for a cheerful, teasing tone and not quite achieving it.

“In general? Yes. Of course. But right now? At the ending of the world? No. It’s a dangerous distraction.”

Clarke nodded several times, turning to stare out at the rain again, blinking back the wetness that was rushing into her eyes. This was what she’d wanted to know. Now she did. Bellamy was holding back everything, fighting not to lose his own focus on the coming disaster. 

Only she’d never thought it would make her heart ache so queerly or leave her feeling so empty to get an answer to her question. She’d thought, she realized, that once she knew what the issue was, she’d be able to argue him out of it. She’d thought wrong.

Wasn’t that the warning? Be careful what you wish for? 

“Clarke?”

She raised her head and struggled for a smile. “Yeah?”

His gaze was warm, and kind, and worried. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sure,” she held his eyes with her own, determined to be convincing. “Of course. Just worried about Raven. And Roan.”

“They’re both tough. And they obviously work well together.”

“Yeah,” she nodded several times. “I see that.”

She felt his hand on her shoulder. “We have a good thing, too, Clarke. A really good thing.”

“Yeah.” She held onto her smile even though her cheeks were starting to ache. “We do.”

“It means everything to me,” he said.

Clarke thought her heart might just crack and fall out of her chest on the spot. “Me, too,” she said. Then she reached out and pressed her hand against his chest, speaking firmly to disguise what might have been a wobbly lip. “You’re a good man, Bellamy Blake. I’m proud to be your…” she hesitated for just a moment, trying to find some other word that might better hold all she felt, but there was none that she knew. So she finished, “friend.”

He smiled warmly at her, and placed his big hand over hers, holding her palm firmly to his heart. “Likewise, Clarke Griffin.”

 

~~~~

“Ugh. My brain is fried!” Nate pushed back from the table and stood up, shaking out his head and shoulders. “You think all these pipes and valves are that important?” he asked her.

“Yeah. I do.” Raven looked around the room, trying her best to communicate how serious she was about this to all of them. “Someone ¬–¬ a lot of someones – spent a hell of a lot of work hours during the worst of the time after the bombs fell rerouting all those pipes and all that gas. I really don’t think they intended to just burn it off the top of the tower after that. I’m not even sure they were the ones who did that. That might have happened later. I really think the gas was _**for**_ something. I just don’t know what.”

“What could you do with that much gas?” Bellamy asked.

“Well, one of the key things you’d do with it – besides heat and cooking, of course – is run generators. For electricity.”

“So, like, grow lights?” Clarke suggested, her brows twisted in thought.

“Sure,” Raven nodded eagerly, glad someone was picking up on her hints. “And water pumps and water filtration systems.”

“The water gardens Roan was talking about?” Nate said.

“Yeah. Like those.”

“Do they even know where those are? Because Roan told me he had no idea how the survivors made it through.” Clarke was sitting back now and shaking her head.

“Yeah, they don’t _know._ Not in a formal sense. Or at least, no one but the fucking priests, maybe, and they’re still not talking. And the chip in the Commanders’ heads.” 

Raven had asked this question as well. But apparently she’d had time for a few followup questions that Clarke hadn’t asked. 

“But there are kid stories. Granny stories. And a few odds and ends of place memory. There’s enough there to know they went deep. Below ground. Filtered water. Used sunlamps for water gardening. Kept animals in pens for protein and hides, and burned the shit for heat.”

“Do they know where?” Bellamy asked.

“No. Not really. Only the very last tunnels and bunkers they used, which have been thoroughly trashed by people stripping them for parts and supplies over the last seventy or so years. That’s where they’ve started work, trying to put them back into some kind of functional shape. But there’s not going to be enough space for everyone, not until they find others, or build new.”

A quick rapping signaled someone at the door. 

They all looked up, tense and wary, not sure what this could mean. Kane got to his feet, silently directing Bellamy and Nate to either side of the door. Ready as they could be for…whatever might come.

“Yes?” Kane said, as he pulled it open.

It was Swego. “The king needs the tekspeka.”

Raven got to her feet.

“What for?” Nate demanded, practically bristling with angry protectiveness.

Raven turned to tell him to settle the fuck down, but Swego answered him without taking offense.

“Her assistance.” Swego’s expression was grounder bland. But then the corner of his mouth quirked up into a tiny smile. “The rest of you are welcome to come along if you like.”

Kane shot out a warning hand, and Nate closed his mouth. Raven glared at him anyway. If she wanted his help, she’d ask for it.

“We accept the invitation,” Kane said. 

To the surprise of their little group, Swego took them to the stairs, not the elevator. Picking up on Swego’s sense of urgency, they found themselves half-jogging, hurrying after him as he mounted the steps two at time. 

Raven rapidly fell behind. Two flights up and she was mentally cursing all of them. By the time she hauled herself up the last few steps of the third flight to find everyone else already waiting for her, their carefully neutral expressions firmly in place, her breathing was unacceptably heavy and her temper was fraying. Raven did not actually swear at them, practicing her own smooth and serene expression instead. Which she regarded as an act of maturity and self control.

Swego led them down another hallway to an open room, one with a large recessed balcony overlooking the southern portion of the city. Roan, Ivon, Echo and a few other Azgeda were out there, right at the edge of the dwindling rain, taking turns with a pair of large and oddly beautiful patch-work binoculars mounted on tripods, staring down at something below them.

“Roan?” Raven asked, coming up behind him.

He spun towards her, and Echo slipped into his spot with the binoculars. 

“Can your arrows blow open barricades as easily as bring down walls?” he asked, eager tension in his body and cunning in his eyes. 

Raven blinked at little at this abrupt question. “Um, probably? I mean, they’ll definitely make things go boom!”

“Boom?” She heard the startled laughter in his voice.

“Boom,” she repeated, mimicking an explosion with her hands while lifting her chin and not quite grinning back at him. But then fidelity to the principles of basic mechanics required that she add, “Whether that’s enough to clear a path, I don’t know. I’d have to see them to know for sure.”

He stepped back and held out his arm, indicating she should choose her binoculars. Which she had to lower because it seemed every Azgeda war chief was at least as tall as Roan. “What am I looking at?” she asked, once she was peering through them and fiddling with the focus.

“The Fleimkepa Temple. It’s on the ground floor of the dark building, there.” 

Raven looked up to see the direction Roan was indicating, then found the building with the binoculars. 

“Okay, got it. Now what?”

“Brandon has holed up there with a group of priests, along with others who don’t believe that Praimfaya is real, who believe it’s a story to cover up an Azgeda/Skaikru takeover, and who want to break the coalition before that happens. If you pull back out to the edge of the streets, you’ll see where they’ve built barricades.”

Raven followed his instructions, and found the barricades he was concerned with. Big piles of rubble, bricks and beams and smashed limestone blocks, broken furniture and cracked window frames, rusted out bits of cars and trucks, bent bicycles and discarded scooters, dented stoves and refrigerators without doors.

“When did they build those?” she demanded, running her gaze along them, looking for thin spots or signs of shifting, and finding more than a few maturing plants along the way.

“Some of them have been there a long time, creating narrow access points for the priests to control. They built more after the anti-tech mob broke in. They closed themselves off today, probably after the call to the tower sounded.”

“What’s their plan? Who cares if they’re there? Didn’t Ilian and his crowd already smash up everything that might have been interesting or useful?” Her questions tumbled out in no particular order.

“It’s the Temple of Becca Pramheda,” he told her. “The Commander, political power, is here in the tower. The Temple is the spiritual center. Because with the chip the Commander was always the reincarnation of the First Commander, Becca Pramheda herself, the two were always unified. But now they’ve been split. So their plan appears to be to create a second potential political power base. One that would allow them to mount a challenge to the Tower. To me. Seizing the Temple is a big step toward accomplishing that.”

“So you want to blow the barricades and, what?” Raven turned and looked at him.

“Drag them out.”

“With?”

“I have a thousand Azgeda troops in the city. Housed here in the lower floors of the Tower. They’re being mobilized now. As soon as the rain finishes, they’ll move into position.”

“And then we blow open the barricades, they sweep in, and take back the temple, consolidating Temple and Tower back in your hands?”

Roan beamed at her, the familiar look of a teacher pleased with their brightest student. “Yes. Exactly.” 

Bellamy cleared his throat before interjecting himself into the conversation. “Seems like there’s a problem with that plan.” 

The look Roan cut his way was more interested than upset. “Yes?”

“Who here speaks with any spiritual authority?” Bellamy asked, holding out his empty hands in question. “You won’t be able to fully reclaim the Temple until you put someone else in it.”

Roan didn’t smile, but he seemed gratified by the question. “Gaia speaks with authority.”

“She’s on your side?” Raven asked, “Really?”

“I’m not on his side, tekspeka,” Gaia and Indra had entered the room unannounced, escorted by another Azgedan loyalist, “but I am not on theirs, either.”

“Indra?” Kane asked. “Where do you stand?”

“Not with them,” Indra replied to Kane, gesturing out the window with her chin. “Whatever our disagreements,” and here Indra looked at Roan alone, “it’s clear to me that we must pool our strengths to survive. They,” and she rolled her eyes toward the Temple, “are only interested in everyone retreating to their own little corners. That way lies nothing but death for us all and for our children after us.”

Roan looked at Bellamy. “Satisfied?”

Bellamy crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. “Guess we’ll see.”

Rather than telling Bellamy not to be such a prick, Raven took a deep breath and looked at Roan. “I should send out my drone. That will help me find the weakest spots. How many streets do you want to open up?”

After that things got a little chaotic. Runners were sent for her gear, a table was dragged in and a quick topographical map created from odds and ends of broken trash scooped up from corners of empty rooms, and tactical assault planning began in earnest.

She was just launching her drone when Roan stepped close to quietly remind her that Brandon knew what it was. “If it’s too low, he’ll try to bring it down.”

“If he sees it at all, he’ll know you’re close to launching your assault,” Raven muttered back. “I know what I’m doing.”

Roan ducked his head in acknowledgment, and stepped away again. 

“If you bring it in from the north, you can use those taller buildings there as a blind.” Clarke said from behind her shoulder, as Raven was settling down with her screens. 

“If, at some point, I’m actually doing something wrong, or I ask for input, I’ll welcome it. But for now,” Raven turned and glared around the room, “everyone can shut the fuck up with the unnecessary advice.”

The rain finally stopped as her little-drone-that-could flitted out from behind a taller building to take a run along the top of what was, according to Indra, the oldest of the barricades. From there Raven worked her way around to the newest, the one most likely to be watched carefully as it closed off the main approach to the Temple.

Then she brought her drone sailing back.

“That’s it?” Echo said, clearly disappointed by the show.

“No,” Raven grunted, still irritated with all of them. She really hated working in front of people who didn’t understand what she was doing. It made her self-conscious and grumpy. “Now we look for the weak spots. All the recorded images are on the computer.”

“What are we looking for?” Roan asked. He’d come close enough to drop to one knee beside her as she sat in front of her folding stands, their shoulders not quite touching as they both looked at her screens.

“We?” Raven asked. 

“We,” he said. The look he was giving her was somewhere between understanding and command. “I’m the shooter, right?”

Raven forced herself to take a deep breath, and then let her shoulders drop when she blew it out. “Yes,” she agreed. “You are. It’s the opposite of before. The brightest parts are the densest. So we’re looking for the dark empty spaces, places to target adjacent supporting structures and blow those out, which should make the rest of the weakened area around it collapse.”

“Like pulling out the supporting beams in a mine shaft, so the ceiling falls.”

“Yes.” Raven narrowed her eyes, quietly assessing him. “That’s a very _specific_ example.”

He only grunted, but she was plenty close enough to see the smallest of smug grins that he flashed her way.

Once they had the data in front of them, it didn’t take them long to find what they were looking for. 

“From the top of this roof, here,” Raven touched the broken brick standing in for the squat, three-story building in question, “the shooters, Roan and Echo,” she nodded at each in turn, “can take out the center of these two barricades at the same time, using two arrows each.” She touched the models of the barricades in question, built of pebbles, rags and splinters. “I’ll show you the exact spots to aim for once we get there. One to shake it up, one to blow it out. Then,” she looked at Roan, “it’s all up to you.”

To Raven’s mild surprise, it all went more or less as planned. Her view from the roof was excellent. The barricades were more stubborn than she’d hoped, but they had six arrows, not four, and with the third set of explosions, the now weakened barriers shattered. She enjoyed the smug feeling of being validated in her choice to make up ten arrows, not six.

Once the barricades were open, Azgedan soldiers poured through the breaches, quickly overwhelming the small, disorganized band attempting to make a stand in the Temple.

By the time the sun was setting it was over. A wonderfully cool breeze from the ocean had arrived and cleared away the humidity and broken up the clouds, and was making the clan banners on the raised platform snap and toss. The two-dozen surviving insurgents who the Azgedans had pulled out from the temple were lined up in the central plaza, along with the surviving assailants from the throne room, each guarded by a loyal soldier as they waited to learn their fate.

Brandon was not among them. His hacked and broken body was found at the last door to the Temple. Raven had asked if he’d been positively identified so often, Bellamy actually volunteered to take her to see the body herself. She accepted.

When the question was put to leaders of the coalition, called out by Gaia, all thirteen hedas, including Marcus Kane speaking for Skaikru, voted unanimously to convict on all charges of treason.

The prisoners were executed on the spot, each guard drawing a knife and slitting the throat of the traitor in front of them.

“Ugh,” Raven shivered as Clarke described it. “Happy to have missed out on that.” 

She and Bellamy had still been making their way back from identifying Brandon’s corpse. To Raven’s enormous relief, it had definitely been him.

“It was fast,” Clarke said. “Merciful, as these things go. No thousand cuts business.”

“Right.” Raven frowned deeply. “All crimes are capital crimes.”

Clarke’s voice firmed up. “Treason is. And these guys weren’t going to keep any promises not to keep fighting. Not much point in asking them to lie about it.”

Raven pulled the shawl someone had found for her a bit closer around her shoulders. The flame might keep the wind out of the upper floors out of the Tower, but down here at Kane’s level the evening breeze was steady. Or at least, that’s why she told herself she shivered. Not because she remembered Sinclair’s dying words, or a man’s hands seizing her in the dark, or waking up bound and gagged in an airlock, waiting to die.

“So, what’s next?” Raven asked.

As though her question had summoned him, Kane walked into the room, the radio that communicated with Arkadia in his hands. “Raven? Abby needs to speak with you.”


	12. Chapter 12

“Because of all that, it turns out I’m the one leaving in the morning,” Raven said to Roan. Her message had caught up with him as he returned from the Temple, where Gaia was busy establishing her control with her mother at her side.

When he’d knocked on Kane’s door, everyone else had fled. Leaving it to Raven to tell him about the death of Luna’s people, from consuming radiated fish, and of Luna’s survival, thanks to her nightblood. 

“Jaha decided to remember that there might still be a good lab at ALIE’s island retreat, one of Becca Pramheda’s, from before the cataclysm,” she explained. “Maybe even where she did the work to create nightblood in the first place. We hope we can recreate her research. Or reverse engineer it using Luna as a template. Find a way to increase human resistance to the radiation, at least shorten our time underground if we can’t eliminate it. Nate’s going to drive me to the shore in the morning to meet up with Abby and the rest.”

Roan looked up from his clasped hands, resting on his knees as he sat on the small sofa across from her, and nodded. “Makes sense that they need you there.”

“I am the tekspeka.” She couldn’t help the grin as she said this. Half-mocking the absurdity of the title, half-thrilled because their fragile bridge between tech and the flame was holding so far.

“Yes.” 

“So...” she waited, hoping that he’d give her more of a hint about how he was taking the news. He didn’t. He was just watching her. It was obviously up to her to initiate their goodbyes. 

“Thanks for all the fucks,” she said.

His solemn expression cracked into a slow, wicked grin. “My pleasure.”

She smirked back. “Mm. Yes. I know.”

His grin faded away. “And now?” He was actively searching her face, his turn to hunt for cues. “A clean break?”

There it was. He’d left it up to her. And he knew she’d been unhappy about his plan to simply walk away from Arkadia, walk away her. Seemed to her a lot like an invitation to make a different call. She met his gaze directly. “We could do that. But you burned through a lot of political capital to establish the principle of you getting to have a personal relationship, one that stands outside politics.”

His expression didn’t change, but his eyes brightened considerably. “Yes. I did.”

She offered him a tentative smile. “Be a shame to let it all go to waste.”

“It would.” He was smiling now, too.

She walked through the open door. “And, I’d really love to take another bath in your big tub.”

“It’s a nice tub.”

“It has room for two.”

He stood up and offered her his hand. “Yes. It does.”

They didn’t make it to tub. Not at first. They started in the empty elevator on the ride up to the top of the tower, and then he fucked her up against the wall as soon as they’d made it inside the threshold of his bedroom. Only after that did they settle into the bath.

 

~~~~ 

 

“Hey, sleepy head.” 

Clarke’s bright grin was the first thing Raven saw as she blinked awake, swaying sideways as the truck bumped and slid over a rough patch of road. 

They were riding in the back on their way to the shore to meet Emori’s boat. Abby, Jackson and Luna were probably already there. Nate and Bellamy were up front, taking turns with the driving. 

Kane had stayed behind in Polis, waiting for two ‘volunteers’ from Arkadia to take Clarke’s and Bellamy’s spots on the Polis work crew. Because of course the grounders didn’t care who actually did the work, and forcing someone else with less status to take on their work details was something grounders did all the time. That Clarke and Bellamy really were needed elsewhere didn’t stop making it sucky, in Raven’s opinion, that they’d availed themselves of the option once Echo had pointed it out.

“Hey,” Raven said, her voice hoarse and creaky.

“Busy night?” Clarke asked, cheekily fluttering her eyelashes in dramatic fashion as she leaned forward to hand over a water bottle.

Raven pushed herself straighter and took a healthy slug out of the bottle before saying, as straight-faced as she could manage, “Yes.”

Clarke stared back, and then nearly as one they burst into peals of laughter. 

“Very busy,” Raven said when she could, with her own exaggerated wink. Then she shuddered hard, remembering everything all at once in a sort of sense memory overload of all her pleasure points. 

Catching sight of Clarke’s knowing smirk and her sparkling eyes, Raven lost it again, starting with a snigger and ending with them both sagging helplessly from gales of laughter and wiping at their crying eyes.

Once they finally settled down, Clarke ducked her head. “So??” 

“So, what?” Raven asked, pretending to have no idea what Clarke meant, stalling for time because she didn’t know how to answer yet. 

“Are you two…?” Clarke trailed off, finally shrugging and saying, “I don’t have any idea what word to use.”

“Yeah,” Raven agreed. “Words suck.”

A brief shadow crossed Clarke’s face. “That they do.” Then she seemed to shake it off. “What’s your best one?”

Raven sighed, and fell back on their stupid code phrase. “We have a _personal relationship_.”

Clarke looked utterly blank. “Meaning?”

Meaning, Raven thought, that she and Roan would continue to fuck each other senseless on whatever rare occasions presented themselves. Meaning that they were friends who shared intimate stories about their lives, who laughed about weird sayings that couldn’t really be translated. Meaning they bounced ideas off each other and worked really well together to solve problems, their very different skill sets complementing rather than clashing. Meaning that as Tekspeka and Commander, they were a damn good team. Meaning they were really screwed.

“Meaning I don’t know what, really,” was what Raven chose to say. “Because it hardly matters, not in the long run. Or even the medium run. We’re all going underground in less than three months. Him, wherever he thinks he needs to be, me...wherever I need to be. Those probably aren’t going to be the same place. After that? Assuming we make it through the first wave? Five years apart. So much shit could happen in five years. Or hell, given everything else on this shithole of a planet, anything that could go wrong in the next ten weeks probably will.”

An uncomfortable silence fell.

“I was really afraid for you,” Clarke said. “It sucked, just watching, while you …”

“No shit,” Raven said, interrupting her before she could go any further.

“Yeah, I know,” Clarke raised her hands to ward off any more criticism, “Nate already made it clear he thinks I’m a total hypocrite… but, it was terrifying.” Clarke paused, her serious expression fading into a quirky little grin. “And a little thrilling.”

Raven shrugged, trying not to show how much the praise helped to take out the sting of the implied reproach. Which was well-earned, and she knew it. When she and Roan had come up with their Tekspeka plan, both of them had been fully aware that that were playing for very high stakes, and how fatal the consequences of failure could be. 

“Was it your idea? To claim the role of First Tekspeka, student-servant of Becca Pramheda?”

“Mostly,” Raven replied. “Roan liked it, gave me the right framework. But once I could control the actual _flame_ flame – and how confusing that was to describe, I realized that most grounders didn’t and don’t actually know what ‘the flame’ of the commanders was. Only the priests. And they aren’t talking these days.”

“Did he give you the words?” 

Clarke’s question felt very pointed to Raven, and her gaze was sharp. Raven was reminded that Clarke was a very smart girl, too. “Um… what?”

“Your Trigedasleng is very good – did he help you with that?”

Raven had wondered when someone would ask her this question directly. “No,” she said. “He didn’t.”

Clarke raised her eyebrows and waited.

“You didn’t – couldn’t – force ALIE out of my head before you ejected her. So, like pulling a drive while the program is still running? Parts of ALIE’s programing are still there, in my head. Languages. For one.”

Clarke’s frown was growing by leaps and bounds. “For one?”

“There’s other stuff. Information. Data. How much natural gas could still be in the system, left over from the world before. Stuff like that. And,” Raven forced it out in a rush, “she talks to me sometimes. In my head.”

Though, a little to Raven’s surprise, ALIE was dead silent right now. She’d half expected her to object to sharing her existence with Clarke. Maybe it really was all Raven, just giving ALIE’s voice to her own thoughts inside her own head. Maybe she was just going slightly mad, because Earth was a fucking bitch who was going to kill them all for humanity’s crimes. 

Now Clarke just looked shocked. “You need to tell my mom.”

“I’m not sick!”

“No. But, the chips were physical right? And yours is still inside you somewhere. On. And working. At… something.”

“Thanks for that hideous image.”

Clarke offered her a lopsided smile. “Sorry. Not trying to be gross. Just, you know, now I’m worrying. A little bit.”

“Me, too.”

“Does Roan know?” 

“Some of it. The languages, obviously. The data.” 

“The talking?”

“No. He’d just worry. He’s got plenty of things to worry about where he can make a difference. He doesn’t need this.”

“So. I can worry about you, but he can’t?”

“Yep. You’re special, Griffin.”

Clarke chuckled, but it was a weak effort, and they both fell silent. Eventually Clarke murmured, “It’s a dangerous time to fall in love.”

“What? Who said anything about falling in love?” Raven objected, feeling terribly self-conscious and unexpectedly vulnerable. No one was supposed to ask her that question. Not even herself. And definitely not Clarke.

Because she knew damn well she could fall in love with Roan in a heartbeat if she let herself forget for even one second how bleak their future really was. But she hadn’t. And she wouldn’t. She was Tekspeka. And a factory rat. And fucking proud of both. She didn’t need or want a king in her heart, complicating all of that.

“No one,” Clarke shrugged it off. “Just something I must have read once.”

Clarke looked impossibly sad all of the sudden, and in one of those flashes of intuition, Raven knew that something had happened between Clarke and Bellamy. Not something fun. Though given their lingering glances and slow touches when he helped her, an able-bodied woman, clamber into a truck she could get into on her own, they’d hardly called it quits on each other, either. 

Raven once wondered why they hell they didn’t just get on with it, the love affair they were both desperately longing for. 

Today? Today she was less certain. More prepared to believe that the same things that were holding her back, were holding one or both of them back, too. And maybe they were all being sensible. 

Or maybe they were all just idiots.

Leaning over, Raven reached out and gently clasped Clarke’s leg. “Sinclair told me….” her throat clogged up, and she sat up and took another sip of water. Stronger now, she was able to get it out. “After Finn, Sinclair told me that love is a renewable resource. You can’t run out. I thought, for a while, he was wrong. That I had. That when I couldn’t fall in love with Wick, not the way he wanted me to, that I’d used all mine up.”

Clarke looked up at her from under her brow, her expression nothing but gentle and supportive. She was already shoving her own issues aside. Again. “And now?” she asked.

Raven sighed, hoping Clarke was still listening. “Now I remember that Sinclair was a really wise man.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Jeanie205](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeanie205/pseuds/Jeanie205) is the best beta reader a fanfic writer could ever hope to have, and she makes all my stories better. I'm lucky to have her. So is the fandom. If you haven't, trot on over and check out her [Bellarke stories!](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeanie205/pseuds/Jeanie205/works?fandom_id=1635478) They're wonderful, each and every one. 
> 
> Seriously - Jeanie is the bomb, you guys. Without her, this wouldn't be 1) nearly so well written, or 2) finished!
> 
> Thank you all who read along, leaving kudos and comments along the way. Those are what make sharing fanfiction special.


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